Israel sends the Palestinians more than a billion dollars in withheld funds

The Israeli government has transferred over a billion dollars to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), as confirmed by the Minister of Civil Affairs, Hussein al-Sheikh, on his Twitter account. The minister guaranteed that "the Israeli government has transferred all financial quotas of the settlement to the account of the Palestinian Authority, amounting to three billion and 768 million shekels". This amount comes from the taxes collected in the name of Palestine by the state of Israel.

This transfer means the resumption of the coordination between the two after being interrupted for half a year. In May, the Palestinians stopped coordinating with Israel in response to the Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank. However, Israel's plans for annexation were postponed in September following the normalisation of relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain through the Abraham Agreements.

This is not the first time Palestine has cut off cooperation with its neighbour. Last year the Palestinian leadership had already rejected the funds raised by Israel in protest against the implementation of an Israeli law that withholds a proportional part of the amount, as it considers that the Palestinians allocate part of this money to pay their prisoners in Israeli jails, some of whom have committed blood crimes and are considered "terrorists".

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said on Monday that the Palestinians were "entitled" to the funds, which are expected to ease the pressure on the Palestinian economy in the midst of a serious budget crisis. The Palestinian economic situation is delicate, with the PNA having to cut the salaries of its officials, at a time when the country's economy had begun to deal with the impact of the new coronavirus pandemic.

The total amount transferred corresponds to the customs and border funds that Israel has collected over the past 7 months for the PNA. The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, has already asked Israel last April to release Palestinian tax revenues to enable the PNA to combat the health, social and economic consequences of the pandemic. For his part, the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, made an offer to the Palestinian government that was notoriously inferior to the aid the US suspended in 2018.

Friedman thus announced the delivery of five million dollars "to Palestinian hospitals and homes" to enable them to "cover their vital and immediate needs" in their fight against the coronavirus. The Palestinian government declined this offer, replying that "We neither wanted nor want your money. Furthermore, we have no relationship or contact with them". The United States almost completely cut off its aid to the Palestinians in 2018 when it ceased to contribute to the corresponding United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).