The Palestinian economy has been in shambles since officials threw a fit over Israel’s counter to their “pay-for-slay” practices by deducting from taxes set aside for the Palestinian Authority the amount paid to terrorists and their families.
The Palestinians refused to accept the deducted funds.
But now they’ve folded, agreeing to accept 2 billion shekels, or $566 million, from Israel, according to Palestinian Media Watch, or PMW.
To justify the move to its domestic audience, the Palestinian Authority “had to invent an alternative reality, assuming that its population and potentially even the international community would never know the truth,” PMW said.
In February, Israel began deducting about $11.6 million per month, the amount the PA admitted it had spent in 2018 to pay salaries to terrorist prisoners and released terrorists.
“At the time, the PA claimed that accepting the deducted funds would be equivalent to accepting that the arrested Palestinians are terrorists and that the move would have ‘ominous political consequences, and it will have legal implications for us as an authority, and on the banking sector, and on the beneficiaries and such,'” PMW said.
Announcing it would accept the money, the PA’s civil affairs minister, Hussein Al-Sheikh, “sowed the seeds of the PA’s alternative reality claiming that the funds were received ‘after exhausting negotiations’ and that the PA would be importing petroleum ‘without the ‘Blu’ tax retroactively for the past 7 months.'”
No negotiations were needed because Israel has been waiting to deliver the money.
“Secondly, Israeli law requires that ‘Blu’ tax be collected on all gas and fuel sold within Israel. A separate provision of the law permits the Israeli Authorities to transfer to the PA any ‘Blu’ collected on gas and fuel destined for the areas under PA control. Since the Israeli Knesset has not functioned for several months (as a result of elections and return elections) it is impossible that any changes in these laws that would allow the PA to import ‘petroleum without ‘Blu’ tax retroactively for the past 7 months’ could have been passed.”
Further, the report said, the tax figures don’t align, meaning “by accepting two billion shekels (which is hundreds of millions more than the ‘Blu’ taxes revenue), the PA has de facto given in to Israel’s demand to accept the tax money minus the terror money deduction.”
When the PA refused to accept the taxes, PA Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad Al-Malki said, “It was agreed yesterday in a meeting with his honor the president [Abbas] to send an official message to the Israeli side, according to which we will not agree to accept any partial amount of the tax money that is to be officially transferred to the Palestinian side. This message has been conveyed to the Israeli side in a clear manner.”
For months now, PA public employees have been getting only half pay.
