Palestinian civil servants formed long queues in the Gaza Strip on Friday to receive millions of dollars in Qatari-funded salaries.
The $15 million Qatari cash infusion was paid out to impoverished civil servants in the enclave, offering Hamas a potential domestic reprieve though Israel said the money would not go to the group.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has slashed Gaza budgets, beggaring tens of thousands of government employees, according to Reuters.
That has helped stoke a half-year of bloody protests and occasional shelling exchanges across the border of Gaza, which Israel keeps under blockade, it said.
The news agency quoted Palestinian sources as saying the Qatari payout, was the first of a total of $90 million that would come into Gaza over the next six months with Israeli approval.
Israel had previously agreed to Doha donating materials for civilian construction projects or fuel, worried that more fungible cash donations could reach Hamas, against which it has fought three wars in a decade.
"One day, I have no money to get food or medicine for my children - and now I will buy them food, medicine and clothes," said Wael Abu Assi, a traffic policeman, outside a Gaza City post office where people queued to draw their salaries.
Observers for Qatar were present at all 12 post offices across Gaza to monitor the salary disbursements. Employees had to present their identity card and be finger-printed, according to Reuters.
A member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet played down their significance.
"This is not money that is going to Hamas activities. It is money that is going to the salaries of civil servants, in an orderly, organized manner," Environment Minister Zeev Elkin told Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM.
Elkin accused Abbas, whose peace talks with Netanyahu stalled in 2014 and who is boycotting the United States because of its pro-Israel policies, of cutting salaries to "inflame Gaza, because he has not been successful on other fronts".
Wasel Abu Youssef, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), criticized the move. "Arrangements through Qatar and elsewhere prolong the crisis of Palestinian division," Abu Youssef told Reuters.
The money was driven into the Palestinian enclave through Israel late Thursday by Qatar's envoy to Gaza, Mohammed al-Emadi, transporting suitcases packed with dollars, according to a Hamas source.
The Israeli-authorized money transfer appeared to be part of a deal that would see cash-strapped Hamas end months of often violent protests along the border in exchange for Israel easing its blockade of Gaza.
