$20m cash fix for Hamas

PALESTINIAN Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar returned from a trip to the Muslim world yesterday with a suitcase bulging with cash, a sign of Hamas’s desperation to replenish government coffers drained by a Western boycott.

The $20 million cash fix came just hours after dozens of civil servants, demanding long-overdue salaries, stormed the parliament building in the West Bank, lobbing water bottles at Hamas lawmakers and forcing the parliament speaker to flee.

The second attack on the parliament this week, along with the shooting death of a Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip, cast doubt on renewed efforts by leaders of the rival Fatah and Hamas parties to halt deadly infighting.