The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said on Monday that cutting the salaries of members of the Palestinian Legislative Council is illegal and not the authority of the Palestinian president or anyone else.

The center said in a statement on Monday that Abbas had issued a decision, apparently orally, to cut the salaries of 37 deputies from the Change and Reform bloc in the West Bank, after ten years to cut the salaries of the deputies of the bloc in the Gaza Strip after the split.

PCHR stressed that the salaries of members of the Legislative Council are matters stipulated by law, not by administrative decisions, stressing that the law did not give any authority to stop the salaries of members of the Legislative Council or isolate them.

PCHR indicated that it had sent a letter to the Minister of Finance in November 2014 asking why the salaries of Change and Reform bloc deputies in Gaza had been cut since June 2007. However, the Ministry refused to give any written clarifications, stressing that this evasion of giving any papers Or official responses aimed at fortifying the decision to cut salaries from the control of the judiciary, by avoiding the issuance of a formal decision to cut, and exploit the situation of disabling the Legislative Council existing since 2007.

“It seems that this scenario is happening now for the West Bank MPs, without any written decision or legal basis,” the center said.