Chairman Bassam Zakarneh of the Palestinian Authority Public Employees' Union declared, on Sunday, that the workers will start an open-ended general strike on Tuesday over unpaid wages, according to the PA's WAFA news agency. Zakarneh said the government has the money but is trying to frustrate the employees, despite its claims to the contrary. He noted that public workers do not have money to buy food for the Muslim holy monthof Ramadan.
PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said, at the start of July, that the authority would pay its employees only half their salaries because the PA had a monthly defecit of $30 million, explaining that promised funding had not materialized. He made it clear that he would not pay until the donor countries made good on their pledges.