Palestinian PM Fayyad slams Arab donors for failing to deliver aid to PA

Fayyad warns that the Palestinian Authority's unprecedented financial crisis could quickly double the number of poor to 50 percent of a population of roughly 4 million.

By The Associated Press | Jan.06, 2013 |

The Palestinian self-rule government is close to being "completely incapacitated," largely because Arab countries haven't delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in promised aid, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said in an interview with the Associated Press Sunday.

If allowed to continue, the Palestinian Authority's unprecedented financial crisis will quickly double the number of Palestinian poor to 50 percent of a population of roughly 4 million, Fayyad told AP.

Fayyad said the malaise is further boosting the political appeal of the Islamic militant Hamas while discrediting him and other proponents of a nonviolent path to statehood in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Hamas seized Gaza from Fayyad's boss, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a 2007 takeover, leaving Abbas with only the West Bank.

The failure of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to deliver on many of its promises, coupled with recent Israeli concessions to Hamas, "has produced a reality of a doctrinal win for what Hamas stands for, and correspondingly a doctrinal defeat for the Palestinian Authority," Fayyad said.

remainder in full: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/palestinian-pm-fayyad-slams-arab-donors-for-failing-to-deliver-aid-to-pa-1.492288