Gaza families to receive more Qatari cash despite balloon attacks

Last month, Qatar delivered another cash grant to 75,000 families in the Gaza Strip.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
A Palestinian Hamas-hired civil servant displays U.S. Dollar banknotes after receiving her salary paid by Qatar, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip December 7, 2018. (photo credit: IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA/REUTERS)
A Palestinian Hamas-hired civil servant displays U.S. Dollar banknotes after receiving her salary paid by Qatar, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip December 7, 2018.
(photo credit: IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA/REUTERS)
Despite the continued launching of incendiary balloons from the Gaza Strip toward Israel, Qatar said it will deliver another cash grant to needy families in the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave next week.
The money will be distributed to 70,000 Palestinian families on Sunday, announced Mohammed Al-Emadi, chairman of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.
Each family will receive $100 through post office branches in several parts of the Gaza Strip, he said, adding that the distribution of cash will take place in accordance with the mechanism that has been in place the past year.
“The families have been chosen according to the criteria and conditions agreed upon in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Development in the Gaza Strip,” Emadi said.
Last month, Qatar delivered a cash grant to 75,000 families in the Gaza Strip.
Emadi’s announcement came as Palestinians continued to launch explosives-laden balloons toward Israel and the killing by the IDF of three Palestinians who infiltrated into Israel on Tuesday night.
Hamas claimed on Wednesday that the three Palestinians were “cold-bloodedly” killed by the IDF. Israel “has committed a new Zionist crime,” Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif Qanou said in a statement. He dismissed the IDF version regarding the circumstances of Tuesday night’s incident, claiming that the three Palestinians did not pose a threat to anyone.
The IDF said the three were shot and killed after they were caught infiltrating into Israel from the Gaza Strip. The three men successfully entered Israeli territory after crossing a perimeter fence from the southern Gaza Strip. The suspects threw an explosive device at IDF soldiers before they were shot dead, the IDF said. No soldiers were wounded.
Meanwhile, senior Hamas official Khalil Al-Haya said the continued delivery of Qatari funds was one of his movement’s conditions for maintaining previous ceasefire understandings reached with Israel under the auspices of Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations.
Haya denied reports about tensions between Hamas and Egypt after Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s recent visit to Iran, where he attended the funeral of Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force who was assassinated by the US in Iraq last month.
“Hamas has never severed its ties with Iran,” the Hamas official said. “Iranian military support for the Palestinian resistance has never stopped.”
Haya also said Israel was not ready for a prisoner-exchange agreement with Hamas.
“We want to achieve a deal, but the occupation doesn’t have anyone now who can carry it out,” he told Palestinian reporters in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas has been holding the remains of two IDF soldiers, Oren Shaul and Hadar Goldin, since Operation Protective Edge in 2014. In addition, it is holding Hisham Al-Sayed, an Arab Israeli, and Avera Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew, both of whom entered the Gaza Strip voluntarily in 2014.