Israeli Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon signed an order to deduct 42 million shekels ($11,584,650) every month from the tax revenues that Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority (PA), while the Palestinian Finance Ministry announced it will pay civil servants half their salaries for the second month in a row.
The Ministry said that prisoners and families of the wounded and killed will be paid in full despite the Israeli punitive measures.
The order signed by Kahlon deducts the monthly transfers over the course of 2019, amounting to 504 million shekels ($139,015,800), according to a report presented to Israel’s security cabinet.
Kahlon told Israel Hayom that he is convinced there is no room for a reward for the murderers, and “this is an important struggle in our just struggle against Palestinian terror. We cannot accept the payments to terrorists and therefore decided on the move. We are committed to terror victims.”
In mid-February, Israel's security cabinet approved the deduction of $138 million from the tax revenues it collects on behalf of the PA under the Oslo agreement.
Salaries were cut in half as of last month after the Authority refused to accept around $200 million in tax revenues because the Israeli government deducted millions of dollars from it for what it claimed was the amount of money the PA pays to families of prisoners held in Israeli jails for resisting the occupation and those killed by Israeli forces.
Palestinian Finance Ministry announced that a minimum of 2000 Israeli shekels will be paid for the low paid employees, and a maximum of 10,000 shekels for the highly paid cabinet ministers, judges, and diplomatic staff.
It stressed that the PA position from not accepting the tax revenues holds as long as Israel continues to deduct money without coordination with the PA.
Speaking at the Arab Summit in Tunisia, President Mahmoud Abbas called for activating the decisions of previous summits on the provision of a financial safety net and fulfilling the financial obligations.
Abbas told the leaders that Israel deducted the welfare payments of detainees and families of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, reaffirming that “we will not abandon our people, especially those who sacrificed, and will continue to support them, even if that costs us our last financial resource.”
He said that Israel’s deduction of part of the tax revenues and the US halt on aid aim at forcing the Authority to surrender and abandon Palestine’s legitimate right to Jerusalem, “but we say to them that Jerusalem is not for sale and it makes no sense for Palestine to be without East Jerusalem as its capital.
