The funds have been transferred to the finance ministry and will go towards paying the salaries of state employees, the statement said.
This is the largest donation since the United States and the European Union, the main donors to the Palestinians, imposed a financial boycott following the March 2006 rise to power of the Islamist Hamas movement, considered a terror group by the West.
The Palestinians had hoped that the formation of a new government on March 17 uniting Hamas and Abbas’s secular Fatah party would lead the West to lift a ban on direct aid to the government.
But both Brussels and Washington, although agreeing to meet non-Hamas ministers, have refused to release funds, demanding that the new coalition explicitly renounce violence, recognise Israel and abide by past peace deals.
Norway, the only Western country to have normalised ties with the new government, announced on Thursday that it had resumed direct aid, transferring 10 million US dollars (7.4 million euros) to the Palestinian Authority.
