The Palestinian Authority (PA) has suspended plans to force more than 6,000 of its employees in the Gaza Strip into early retirement, prime minister Rami Hamdallah said on Saturday. The move was announced last month and seen as the latest attempt to squeeze the Islamist Hamas movement, which rules Gaza.
Many of the workers are in the health and education ministries, and aid officials are very concerned about the implications for the two million inhabitants of the impoverished coastal territory. "We decided, in consultation with President Mahmud Abbas, to allow education and health employees who were recently (asked) to retire early to continue their work in the ministry," a statement from Hamdallah on the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said.