Following an announcement that the Palestinian Authority would face a 400 million dollar shortfall at year-end, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad made an announcement from New York that donors have pledged to make up that 400 million.
The donations will be made over the next four months, Fayyad told reporters following a coordinating meeting with donor countries Thursday. The last donor committee meeting was in Egypt’s resort town of Sharm Ash-Sheikh, ostensibly to secure funds for the rebuilding of Gaza. During the same meeting the Palestinian Authority worked to secure funds for operating costs in the West Bank.
The same donor countries, many who pledged four billion dollars in multi-year support at the 2008 Paris conference, once again assured their support for Palestinian Government work. On Tuesday the German government announced the 250,000 Eruo would go to technical assistance support for the Palestinian Authority Ministry of the National Economy.
Fayyad noted that this time support came for his 25 August plan “Ending the Occupation, Establishing a State,” which outlined mechanisms for building state infrastructure over the next two years and declaring a Palestinian state at the end of that period. The Prime Minister gave a presentation to the committee on the outlines of the plan, and noted it was well received. One week before the UNGA meeting in New York, UN Envoy to the Quartet Robert Serry gave an information session to UN committees expressing his support for Fayyad’s plan.
“We need constructive and positive interventions on the domestic and international levels to put an end to the occupation and to achieve a political settlement to do justice to the Palestinian people after long decades of suffering and being prevented the realization of their aspirations towards independence and freedom,” Fayyad told donors.
“We look forward for Arab and international support to build our independent state on the basis of democracy and modernity, which has full power over its national territory on the borders of 1967 in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem as its capital,” he added.
On 22 September Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg who leads the ad-hoc Liaison Committee that tracks aid to Palestinians announced to reporters at the UN buildings in New York that the PA faced a 400 million US dollar shortfall despite increased aid. "We note that there has been increased funding coming to the Palestinians, that's on a positive note…but on the negative side there is still a shortfall of 400 million in the Palestinian budget which needs to be addressed.”
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