Mandatory Retirement Plan for Education and Health Workers in Gaza Halted

Palestinian Authority officials have halted the implementation of a plan for the mandatory and early retirement of over six thousand public service employees in the Gaza Strip. According to a report by AFP, Rami Hamdallah, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, stated in a statement on Saturday that the execution of the early retirement plan for employees in the education and health sectors in Gaza was stopped after consultations with Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority. As reported by AFP, the early retirement plan for 6,150 public service employees in Gaza was announced last month with the aim of exerting more pressure on the Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Most of those affected by this plan are under the two ministries of education and health in Palestine, and previously, officials from aid organizations had warned about the consequences of such an action on the two million residents of the Gaza Strip. AFP reports that the statement from the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority did not clarify whether all of the more than six thousand individuals whose employment was to be terminated would be retained or not. However, the statement emphasized that the decision to halt the implementation of this decision was made to 'ensure the provision of services' to the residents of Gaza. The mandatory retirement plan for public service employees in Gaza faced strong opposition from Hamas. Since 2007, when Hamas, which at that time held the premiership of the Palestinian Authority, took control of the Gaza Strip after a conflict with leaders of the Fatah movement and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority has continued to pay the salaries of public sector employees, although the amount of payments has decreased in recent months. In nearly ten years since this conflict began, numerous efforts have been made for reconciliation between these two Palestinian groups, all of which have failed. In April of this year, the Palestinian Authority also stopped its payments to Israel for supplying electricity to the Gaza Strip, which left the area with only two hours of electricity per day. However, later Egypt assisted the residents of Gaza by supplying fuel for power generation.