Palestinian officials said the Israeli government transferred yesterday to the Palestinian government account an amount of 500 million NIS (around $118 million), which included the customs funds collected by Israel last month and a payment of the custom and tax funds that Israel froze for the last 18 months. Israeli officials said the Israeli government will transfer the seized Palestinian funds in payments within the next six months without explaining the amount of these payments although Palestinian sources estimate that the whole amount reaches between $600 million and $700 million. A full month salary is expected to be paid to all PA employees, including the civil servants and the military personnel, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within the next few days and this will be the first time that employees get their full salary in more than 18 months. Officials in the Palestinian government said the amounts transferred will be used to pay the salaries of the PA civil servants and military personnel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and some social allocation payments and covering the recurrent expenditure of the government and payment of the debts due to the private sector. An Israeli senior official said: We selected a mechanism to transfer the frozen funds and these funds will be paid in several installments as of Sunday (yesterday) to the PA and this process will last six months and the total amount of the funds to be transferred reaches $400 million after deducting the debts of the PA to Israel.

Published at Al Ayyam NewsPaper on July 2, 2007