Abdallah al-Hourani has been forced to make the kind of decisions that parents dread.
Receiving no wages for the past seven months, he has stopped paying tuition fees for two of his children who are attending university. Of his many debts, he owes nearly $2,000 for basic groceries, a considerable sum given that his monthly salary stood at only $1,000.
Al-Hourani is a nurse in the orthopedics department of Nasser Hospital in the Khan Younis area of Gaza. His problems are shared by around 42,000 of Gaza’s public sector employees. All of them are being denied wages because of circumstances beyond their control.
In April last year, the Palestinians’ two main political parties, Fatah and Hamas, signed a “national unity” agreement. Although it was supposed to end the divisions between the Palestinians’ representatives, many aspects of it were vague — including the question of salaries for those employed in the public sector.
Workers have been left in the lurch as a consequence.
That al-Hourani has served his people selflessly is beyond dispute. When Israel bombed Gaza for 51 days last summer, he cared for the injured and dying, despite having no idea when his paycheck would arrive. He had to brave Israeli bomb attacks while traveling by ambulance from his home in the city of Rafah to Khan Younis.
Some 23 health workers died as a direct result of the Israeli attack, 16 of them while on duty. Another 83 were injured, “the majority of whom were ambulance drivers for the various pre-hospital emergency service providers,” according to an independent medical fact-finding report.
“Once I stayed [in the hospital] for 72 hours continuously, working under pressure,” al-Hourani said. “It was a very big responsibility.” more
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