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Palestinians Trying to Dodge Pre-UN Vote Face-Off with Obama
(Ha'aretz) Avi Issacharoff - Intense negotiations are underway between the EU, the PA and the American government regarding the specific formula of the request for Palestinian statehood recognition at the UN. Senior PA officials are trying to wrest last-minute promises from the U.S. government. The PA's status, impaired by a budgetary crisis which has made it difficult to pay officials' salaries, is not what it was in the not-so-distant past. PA officials therefore need to stabilize their regime's image in the eyes of the Palestinian public, partly by taking tough steps vis-a-vis Israel and the U.S. The Hamas regime in Gaza also faces a fiscal crisis, apparently due to a reduction in the assistance proffered by Iran to Gaza. Hamas has not paid wages to its bureaucrats for the past two months.