BRUSSELS, May 5, 2006 (AFP) - The European Commission said Friday that it was ready to offer 34 million euros (43 million dollars) in humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territories, whose government is on the verge of bankruptcy.
Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel will make the offer to the EU's 25-member states ‘in the next few days’, his spokesman said, adding that the new money would be used for food aid, sanitation, water and health projects.
The European Union is the biggest donor to the Palestinians, many of whom live in poverty, but it suspended direct aid to the government after Hamas took office in March because the militant group refuses to renounce violence or to recognise Israel.
Israel has also slapped heavy financial sanctions on Hamas, compounding a financial crisis that could bring the Islamic group down.
The more than 160,000 civil servants on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority, amounting to a wage bill in excess of 120 million dollars a month, have not been paid for two months.
Hamas has since turned to Arab and Muslim countries to keep it afloat.
‘At the moment, 4.1 million Palestinians are facing food shortages, around 40 percent of the population,’ Michel said in an interview in the Friday edition of Belgium's Le Soir newspaper.
He said that ‘important means’ must be mobilised because the ‘Palestinian Authority's social services are going under.’
Since Hamas swept to power, the EU has been searching for ways to channel funds to the Palestinian people without putting it in the hands of the group, which figures on the bloc's terror black list.
The chief spokeswoman for EU external affairs, Emma Udwin, said that the so-called Middle East diplomatic quartet -- the EU, United Nations, United States and Russia -- would examine that issue in New York on Tuesday.
‘We will meet quartet partners next week in New York and we will be discussing with them the current financial situation; the needs on the Palestinian side, the ways in which the donor community will react,’ she said.
She said that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has retained the support of the quartet, could play the role of an ‘interface’ between the Palestinians and the international donor community.
Udwin also said the commission has been searching in particular for ways to fund the health and education sectors in the Palestinian territories.
In total the EU provides around 500 million euros annually to the Palestinians -- half from the commission and half from the member states.
The overwhelming majority of that money has never been put directly into the hands of the Palestinian government, and Udwin explained that only 31 million euros was currently frozen.
She said the commission will continue to provide humanitarian aid and try to meet the basic needs of the Palestinian people.