Israel and the PLO, at each other's throats for decades, have joined forces to plead for foreign donations to keep their hard-won peace deal from stalling before it starts.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO West Bank chief Faisal al-Husseini, at opposite poles in the Palestinian struggle, held separate talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Koji Kakizawa to ask for more financial aid for areas to be under Palestinian rule.Particularly crucial is the plight of the Palestinian police force, the backbone of self-rule in Gaza and Jericho under the pact signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in Cairo Wednesday.
The 9,000-strong force, already plagued by delays in entering the self-rule areas, is desperately short of funds, the head of an international donor committee said Thursday.
Israel was to have officially transferred power to the PLO for the first time Thursday, turning over a police station to Palestinians in Gaza.
But the transfer was put off, as were plans for a triumphant entry by 1,000 uniformed Palestinian police.
A senior Palestinian commander inspecting police facilities in Gaza Thursday said lack of money was the cause of the delay, blaming "donors who are not fulfilling their promises."
In Cairo, Terje Larsen, Norway's Middle East mediator and head of an international donor committee, said only half the funding for the force's first six months of operation had been met so far.
The delay left Gaza's nearly one million Palestinians in the lurch, with little to show for nearly seven years of revolt and their high hopes invested in the framework Israeli-PLO accord signed in Washington in September.