The biggest losers in the current political stalemate in Palestine have been the civil servants. Their total number is a bit over 150,000. The actual civil servants are 73,000 and those on the security payroll from the various apparatuses are said to be 85,000. Add to this number those who are retired and the families of the prisoners and martyrs, and you get possibly up to 175,000 Palestinians who have not been paid since February 2006, when the present Haniyeh government was elected.

There were some exceptions: emergency hospital staff was not included and passports for important issues, like urgent medical travel or pilgrimage, were granted.

The strike was not total. Most of the civil servants in Gaza were not included, and in the West Bank, a thriving underground business has been going on. Passports have been issued to many people even if not for life-threatening ailments that needed travel abroad or for performing pilgrimage.

As expected, the civil servants’ strike has been attacked as politically motivated, fed by the idea that the West Bank, with a stronger PLO presence, has gone on strike while Gaza, with a stronger Hamas presence, did not. Those who do not agree with the criticism say that in Gaza, where there are more Hamas civil servants, they are getting paid indirectly from the various slush funds that Hamas has been able to bring into the Gaza Strip in suitcases carried across the Rafah crossing

Abbas is scheduled to give a long-awaited explanation to the people of Palestine for what has happened since the elections, including the various attempts to create a national unity government. It is expected that Abbas will declare the present Haniyeh government a caretaker government, which is a compromise between dissolving the Haniyeh government and preparing for elections, or keeping it in power without any clear light at the end of the tunnel.

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