(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) Palestinian ministers on Monday cut short a visit to the Gaza Strip following disagreements with Hamas movement over the status of thousands of Hamas-hired civil servants.
"The Palestinian ministers have left the Gaza Strip following heated disagreements with Hamas over the civil servants' crisis," Saleh Zidan, a member of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), told The Anadolu Agency.
Zidan said that Gaza's security forces have prevented the ministers from meeting with civil servants who have been hired by the Palestinian Authority prior to the 2007 division between Hamas and West Bank rival Fatah.
For his part, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a Monday statement that the ministers' departure from the Gaza Strip was based on orders from Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.
Abu Zuhri said that Hamdallah's instructions came amid the failure to negotiate a deal to put Hamas-hired civil servants on the payroll by the unity government.
Eleven Palestinian ministers entered the Gaza Strip on Sunday through the Israeli-controlled Erez border crossing for what had been scheduled to be a one-week stay aimed at discussing the Gaza Strip's most pressing problems.
Ihab Bassiso, the Palestinian government's spokesman, said on Sunday that the visiting ministers would primarily focus on integrating the Gaza Strip's civil servants who had been hired by Hamas movement during the latter's control of the enclave since 2007.
Thousands of the Gaza Strip's civil servants have not received their monthly salaries since Hamdallah's government was unveiled in June of last year.
Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas signed a reconciliation deal in April of last year that called for the formation of a national unity government.
The government was formed last summer, but it has yet to assume full control of the Gaza Strip.
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