Israel has thawed hundreds of millions of shekels from the "terrorist money" paid by the Palestinian Authority to terrorists, in violation of the law and the statement of the Minister of Defense.
This emerges from an analysis of an official report by the PA sent to Western countries, conducted by the "Palestinian Media Look" research institute.
Last September, Israel transferred NIS 500 million to the PA, in addition to the tax money it collects and transfers to it every month - this follows a meeting held in Ramallah between Defense Minister Bnei Gantz and PA Chairman Abu Mazen at the end of August.
Shortly after the Gantz-Abu Mazen meeting, the Government Operations Coordinator Unit in the Occupied Territories (IDF) clarified that every NIS 500 million is a "loan" and that the entire source of the loan is advances at the expense of future tax collection. The source of the half billion "is not from the public coffers of the Israeli taxpayer."
Defense Minister Bnei Gantz, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
On the other hand, in recent days, the Palestinian Authority has published its budget implementation report for September, in English. A total of NIS 1.77 billion.
A footnote in the report also mentioned the additional half a billion shekels that Israel transferred to the Palestinian Authority, but 400 million of them were defined in the Authority's report as funds that would have reached the PA from "previous months", ie repayment of Israel's debt to the Authority, and not at future collection. The remaining NIS 100 million has indeed been defined as an "advance" at the expense of future tax collection. In other words, the Authority clarifies in an official report that it does not intend to return to Israel 80% of the half billion shekels transferred to it.
Purpose of the Offset Law
This is exacerbated by the fact that at the end of the meeting between Ganz and Abu Mazen last summer, the Palestinian Authority claimed that the Defense Minister had agreed to return "some of our money held by Israel" - that is, to transfer to the PA some of Israel's frozen funds following the implementation of the Offsetting Law. ".
The purpose of the Offsetting Law is to combat the PA's payment to terrorists and their families, by freezing the money paid to terrorists from the funds transferred to the PA by the Israeli government.
Under the offsetting law, the government has so far frozen more than NIS 1.3 billion earmarked for the authority.
If the Palestinian Authority's report reflects the reality, it means that the Israeli government has emptied the offsetting law of its content and transferred to the PA almost one-third of the funds frozen - despite continued payments to terrorists by Abu Mazen.
Defense Minister Bnei Gantz said: "As previously reported, the loan was given out of future repayment funds that the Palestinian Authority was supposed to receive from the Israeli collection."
Itamar Marcus, director and founder of the "Look at the Palestinian Media" Institute, said: "Disagreements between Israel and the PA over the nature of the NIS 400 million are unreasonable.
Could it be that Israel transferred almost half a billion shekels to the PA without a written agreement stating that it was a loan?
