Saudis, Qataris may fund Palestinian payroll

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Israel has frozen the transfer of millions of dollars in tax rebates and customs payments to the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian officials said yesterday that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have promised $33 million in quick aid to ease a severe budget crisis.

Saudi Arabia has promised $20 million, and Qatar has pledged $13 million to help the Palestinian Authority pay January salaries to 137,000 employees, a senior Palestinian official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement was not final.

Earlier, Israel said it was suspending the transfer of $45 million in tax and customs revenues that it had collected in January while Western nations weigh whether to continue supporting the Palestinian Authority after Hamas, with its history of suicide bombings and its rejection of Israel, forms a government.

The 137,000 people on the Palestinian Authority payroll, including almost 60,000 security officers, are supposed to receive their salaries today. Even with promises of new aid, a Palestinian official said the paychecks would be unlikely to be ready until Monday at the earliest.

Even a week's delay could mean hardship for large numbers of Palestinians. The Palestinian economy is in tatters after five years of violence with Israel. Unemployment is 22 percent, and in many cases even the meager government salaries support extended families.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said Israel was ''not out of sync" with the rest of the world in holding up the transfer. He said that in the past, when Israel suspected that the Palestinian Authority was using funds to support violence, Israel put its money into escrow accounts, releasing it later.