The Knesset approved the first reading of a bill authorizing the government to deduct an amount equal to the salaries the Palestinian Authority pays to those imprisoned and their families from tax and tariff revenue Israel collects on behalf of the PA.
The bill, which passed its first reading on a 55-14 vote, would leave the government’s top-level security cabinet with the final say on whether to “freeze” transfer payments to the PA to offset the stipends.
Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel collects taxes—value-added tax and customs fees—on behalf of the PA and transfers them to Ramallah.
The bill, sponsored by Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, calls for the seized funds to be diverted instead into efforts to support victims of terrorism, as well as for the funding of counterterrorism projects.
“We are shutting off the tap for PA Leader Mahmoud Abbas,” Lieberman said Monday. “This madness, where we give the Palestinian Authority money we know it is using to fund acts of terror against us, will stop.”
Joint Arab List MK Ahmad Tibi slammed the bill, saying: ”The system whereby the money of the Palestinian people is withheld by the Ministry of Finance, which is supposed to act merely as a channel through which to transfer the money, is extortion by the occupation.”
“Sometimes it is done through the Israel Electric Corporation, at other times it is done through the Palestinian prisoners.”
”If snipers are allowed to shoot children, then it is also permissible to steal the Palestinians' money,” he said.
Israel’s Ministry of Public Security, in preparation for a vote on the bill, has claimed that Palestinian prisoners receive thousands of dollars during their imprisonment, indicating that the value of the amounts spent for the benefit of prisoners and families of martyrs amount to seven percent of the PA’s budget.
