“The current government is fighting the Palestinian Authority itself.”
By World Israel News Staff
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh warned that Israeli-approved sanctions against the Palestinian Authority, which withholding tax monies to give to the families of terror victims, would lead to the PA’s “prompt” collapse.
The sanctions were in response to the PA’s appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to issue a legal opinion about Israel’s “occupation.”
Elements of Israel’s defense establishment have long touted the importance of Israel’s security cooperation with the PA in preventing more terror, but officials in the new government do not accept the claim, saying the PA itself was a terror organization for funding terrorists and their families as well as inciting to terror.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday said he had “no interest” in keeping the Palestinian Authority in existence, given that it “encourages terrorism and is an enemy.”
Speaking to the Israeli left-wing Haaretz daily, Shtayyeh said the Palestinians “have a right to complain to the world about the ‘occupation.’”
According to Shtayyeh, Israel’s decision to transfer approximately 139 million shekels (about $39 million dollars) from PA funds to Israeli victims of terrorism – as well as to continue the freeze on taxes equal to the amounts that the PA pays to support prisoners convicted by Israel of terrorism – “are another nail in the Palestinian Authority’s coffin, unless there is immediate intervention by the international community, namely the administration in Washington and Arab countries.”
“Previous Israeli governments worked to eliminate the two-state solution,” Shtayyeh said. “And the current government is fighting the Palestinian Authority itself. We’re reading the map as clearly as possible: Increasing settlement construction while severing Jerusalem from [Judea and Samaria], annexing Area C and now crushing the PA – that is the program guiding the Israeli government.”
Area C, comprising around 60% of Judea and Samaria, is under Israeli civilian and military control and is where Jewish communities are located.
According to Shtayyeh, the PA was not receiving regular funding from the United States and the European Union transfers funds for infrastructure only.
The Biden administration resumed financial aid to the PA after the Trump administration cut it over the so-called pay-for-slay program paying terrorists and their families.
Despite Shtayyeh’s claims to the contrary, the Palestinians have been aggressively building in Area C using European monies. According to a report released last year by the Ministry of Intelligence, the EU invested half a billion dollars in support of the Palestinian Authority’s illegal takeover of Area C in Judea and Samaria.