Palestinian political, legal and public figures have condemned the exclusion of Gaza employees from a PA arrangement allowing accumulated financial dues to cover university fees.
Key Developments
- A new arrangement allows eligible PA employees and retirees in the West Bank to use accumulated financial dues to pay their children’s university fees, while Gaza employees and retirees were excluded.
- Palestinian political and rights groups described the distinction as discriminatory and questioned the legal basis for treating employees differently according to their location.
- The decision has generated particular anger amid Gaza’s catastrophic conditions, where public employees have endured years of accumulated financial and employment-related grievances.
A decision excluding Palestinian Authority employees and retirees in the Gaza Strip from a financial arrangement available to their counterparts in the occupied West Bank has triggered widespread accusations of discrimination and demands that the measure be reversed.
The controversy followed an arrangement announced by the PA Ministries of Finance and Education and Higher Education in Ramallah allowing public employees to use financial dues accumulated and owed to them to pay university tuition and fees for their children.
According to statements cited by Quds News Network, the arrangement applies to civilian and military PA employees and retirees in the West Bank, referred to administratively as the northern governorates.
Employees and retirees in Gaza, or the southern governorates, were excluded.
The distinction has prompted objections from political factions, legal organizations, retired military personnel and public figures, who argue that employees in Gaza possess the same financial rights and should not be denied access to money already owed to them because of where they live.
The criticism comes as Gaza continues to endure catastrophic conditions resulting from Israel’s genocide, widespread destruction and displacement, alongside poverty and the collapse of basic services.
For PA employees in Gaza, however, the latest controversy also follows years of financial and employment difficulties, including accumulated unpaid dues and restrictions on employment-related rights.
‘Gaza is Not Outside the Homeland’
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) described the exclusion as “clear discrimination” between public employees in Gaza and the West Bank.
It argued that employment rights could not be divided or administered according to double standards.
The DFLP said Gaza employees had already been deprived of a range of employment rights, including promotions, appointments and employment opportunities.
Rather than imposing additional restrictions, it said, Gaza’s extraordinary circumstances should require measures that strengthen the ability of employees and their families to endure the current crisis.
The group called on the PA leadership and Finance Ministry to reverse the decision and allow Gaza employees to use their accumulated financial dues on the same basis as their West Bank counterparts.
“Gaza is not outside the homeland, and its employees are not second-class citizens,” the DFLP said.
Retirees Demand Reversal
The National Authority for Retired Military Personnel in the southern governorates similarly described the measure as discriminatory between employees belonging to the same Palestinian Authority.
It called for Gaza’s employees and retirees to be allowed to use their withheld financial dues to pay their children’s university fees.
The organization held the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa responsible for what it described as the continued policy of discrimination.
It argued that a government unable to guarantee equality between PA employees and retirees in Gaza and the West Bank was undermining its own political and moral legitimacy.
The organization went further, calling for the government’s resignation if the policy continued.
What Is the Legal Basis?
The Palestinian Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, known as Musawa, raised questions about the legal basis for excluding Gaza employees.
The organization called on the Ministry of Education and Higher Education to clarify whether employees in the southern governorates were covered by the arrangement and to ensure that they were not excluded either directly or through administrative procedures.
Musawa stressed that money owed to a public employee constitutes a financial right and that access to those funds should not depend on where an employee lives or works unless an explicit legal provision establishes otherwise.
It pointed to Article 9 of the Palestinian Basic Law, which establishes equality before the law and the judiciary and prohibits discrimination among Palestinians.
Any difference in treatment between employees in the northern and southern governorates who have the same legal employment status and whose financial claims arise from the same source, the group argued, requires a “legal, objective and publicly stated justification.”
Musawa posed the question directly: if an employee in Gaza has the same employment status and is owed money by the public treasury, what is the legal basis for preventing that employee from using those funds to pay university fees?
The organization also called for an alternative administrative mechanism that takes Gaza’s exceptional circumstances into account, warning against allowing procedural requirements to become a practical means of denying employees access to their rights.
(PC, QNN)
Abbas the traitor. The wannabe Jew…
The people of Palestine deserve better.