GAZA CITY, 1 June 2006 — The cash crunch has resulted in a worsening humanitarian crisis, prompting the United Nations and aid organizations working in the Palestinian territories to ask donor nations for additional funding yesterday. In November, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and various NGOs asked the international community for $215 million in their annual emergency aid appeal for programs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Yesterday, they took the rare step of revising that plea just six months after first making it, saying an additional $170 million would be necessary to avert disaster.

“The situation has deteriorated to such a degree that we’re now forced to revise it upward,” OCHA head David Shearer told potential donors and journalists at a press conference in East Jerusalem. The additional aid money would be channeled largely into job creation programs, cash and food handouts for the needy and health care.

After the Hamas movement, which is committed to Israel’s destruction, won parliamentary elections in January, Western countries cut off direct aid to the government and Israel stopped turning over customs duties collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian Authority has since been unable to pay salaries to its 160,000 employees or provide many basic services to Palestinians. An increasingly severe system of road closures in the West Bank and the frequent closure of crossings in and out of Gaza that Israel says is necessary for security is further strangling the Palestinian economy, UN officials said.

Unemployment is surging.

In the Gaza Strip only 28 percent of the work force has a paying job, according to UN figures and per capita GDP across the Palestinian territories has declined by 27 percent after three years of moderate growth.

The road closures are also making it difficult for aid organizations to reach Palestinians, UN officials added. “As we are being asked by everybody to provide more services, it is becoming more difficult for us to provide those services,” said Filippo Grandi, the deputy head of the UN’s refugee agency in the West Bank and Gaza.

To date, donor nations have stumped up only $71 million. In past years OCHA has received about 50 percent of sought-after aid cash for the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian civil servants will receive partial payment of their salaries in the next two days, Finance Minister Omar Abdelrazeq said yesterday.

The minister told journalists that the government had received a raft of local taxes and donations which had enabled it to release the purse strings for employees who have gone unpaid for months. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh had announced on Tuesday that around 40,000 of the Palestinian Authority work force would be paid in full in the coming days if they earn less than 1,500 shekels ($330) a month.

The remainder would receive loans from the government, added Haniyeh.

All government employees, including members of the security services, have been unpaid since February as a result of a freeze in Western aid payments. Although Hamas has received alternative funding pledges from other Muslim countries, banks have been unwilling to handle the cash for fear of falling foul of US anti-terror finance laws.

Meanwhile, the UN’s Middle East envoy said yesterday that a Palestinian initiative that would amount to a de facto recognition of Israel is unlikely to satisfy international demands of the Hamas-led government.

The initiative, drafted by jailed Palestinian faction leaders, calls for a Palestinian state on the land conquered by Israel in 1967. But even if Hamas were to sign on to such a proposal, international sanctions would likely continue, Alvaro de Soto said at a press conference.

“I see (the proposal) very much as an inter-Palestinian search for consensus,” de Soto said. “I don’t see it yet as an attempt by the Palestinian government to address the three principles articulated by the Quartet.” The Quartet, comprising the United States, European Union, Russia and the UN, has demanded that Hamas recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist, renounce violence and recognize past agreements before the West resumes aid payments to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority.

— With input from agencies