Special to WorldTribune.com

GAZA CITY — Hamas has intensified measures to gain revenues in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian sources said Hamas decided to impose taxes on major companies and banks in the Gaza Strip. They said the revenues were meant to renew salaries to Hamas’ rank-and-file who served as civil servants since 2007.

“The plan is to ensure that big business pays its share,” a source said.

The sources said Hamas also imposed new taxes on importers and exporters. They said Hamas could gain several millions of dollars per year by taxing those importers benefiting from the $5.4. billion international reconstruction program in the Gaza Strip.

On Jan. 27, the United Nations announced it suspended funding for the repair of damaged homes in the Gaza Strip. The UN Refugee and Works Agency said it received only $135 million in pledges for a $720 million program.

“$5.4 billion was pledged at the Cairo conference last October and virtually none of it has reached Gaza,” UNRWA director in the Gaza Strip, Robert Turner, said. “This is distressing and unacceptable.”

The tax program was decided amid delays in pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars by such Hamas supporters as Qatar and Turkey. The sources said pressure by Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as the sharp decline in crude oil prices blocked some $400 million from arriving in the Gaza Strip.

“The failure to pay the salaries of the public workers in Gaza is a real crime, which the consensus government commits against the Palestinian public in Gaza,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said. “The failure to pay the salaries of Gaza public workers is a mere political blackmail and punishment.”

Hamas has been under pressure from up to 50,000 civil servants dismissed by the return of the Palestinian Authority. Instead, the PA has restored the positions of thousands of Fatah members ousted in the Hamas coup in 2007.

“We urge all the international concerned parties to intervene with immediate effect to prevent the situation reaching the stage of explosion.” Palestinian Legislative Council chairman Ahmed Baher, a Hamas member, said.

In an analysis on Jan. 24, the Hamas daily Al Resala said the failure to pay government salaries sparked a decline of support for the new Fatah-Hamas government. The newspaper also asserted that opponents were trying to “consume Hamas financially.” Still, Hamas was not expected to return to its former government.

“PA President Mahmoud Abbas is betting that Hamas will lose its temper and launch a thoughtless revolution,” Yehya Mussa, a senior Hamas political operative, said.

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