The Israeli government has been trying directly and indirectly to persuade the Palestinian Authority to receive its tax revenues, including a secret transfer of up to $180 million for the PA’s bank account, revealed sources in Tel Aviv and Ramallah.
However, these attempts have failed, sources affirmed. The PA has refused to accept tax revenues collected on its behalf by Israel so long as the Jewish state deducts millions of dollars from them.
“Our position is as it was: We will not receive any money from Israel if it is incomplete,” PA President Mahmoud Abbas told the weekly cabinet meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday.
“This is something we will not accept at any cost,” AFP quoted him as saying.
He also warned that Israel is seeking to legalize its deduction of the taxes it collects on behalf of the PA.
Israel collects around $190 million a month in customs duties levied on goods destined for Palestinian markets that transit through Israeli ports, and then it transfers the money to the PA.
In February, it decided to deduct around $10 million a month from those revenues, corresponding to the amount it said the PA paid families of prisoners or directly to inmates serving time in Israeli jails.
Palestinians responded by saying they would refuse any funds from which unilateral deductions had been made.
The Arab League pledged last week to provide the PA with $100 million monthly, potentially averting a financial crisis caused by the row.
Abbas on Monday called on the body to honor that pledge, averting a crippling financial crisis.
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“We do not have high hopes, but perhaps the amount could be considered a debt that we return as soon as Israel returns the money,” he said.
Member of the Central Committee of Abbas’s Fatah party Hussein al-Shaikh said Monday that he met with Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon on Saturday to return all tax transfers because of the deduction.
Abbas also criticized the United State for closing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington, moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
He said the US so-called "Deal of the Century” is known and there is nothing to wait for.
“We told the Arab League that we will not wait, and we are against the deal of the century.”
He said what it holds is not important as what matters is what has already happened, stressing that the PA will only open the door for talks with the US administration in case it revokes its earlier decisions and moves.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
