“This sum is the third instalment of a Qatari donation to support the Palestinian people and pay the salaries of Palestinian teachers,” Mohammed Sobeih told journalists in Cairo, where the 22-member league is based.
“The Arab League will transfer this amount through its own mechanism to the Palestinian Authority,” he said.
Qatar has already donated two previous amounts of 22 million dollars each to the Palestinian Authority, again to pay teachers’ salaries.
Last week hundreds of angry Palestinian teachers staged a protest demanding to be paid their salaries in full, as well as several months’ arrears.
At the start of the school year they went on strike for two months because they had not been paid. In recent months they have received part of their salaries, thanks mainly to the money from Qatar.
The Palestinian Authority still faces diplomatic and financial restrictions despite the formation in March of a government of national unity grouping the Islamist Hamas movement and the Fatah faction of president Mahmud Abbas.
It replaced a Hamas-controlled government which was paralysed by a Western aid boycott and financial sanctions imposed after the Islamists took power in March last year after winning legislative elections in the Palestinian territories.
The boycott was imposed because of Hamas’s refusal to recognise Israel’s right to exist, renounce violence and abide by past peace agreements.
