OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel announced Wednesday it was releasing millions of dollars in tax revenues it owes the Palestinians, lifting a month-old freeze that had threatened to undermine the pro-Western Palestinian Authority.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had come under international pressure to hand over the funds, about $100 million a month that includes import duties Israel collects on behalf of the West Bank-based authority.
The money is vital for paying civil servants employed by the Palestinian government in the occupied West Bank, where it exercises limited self-rule under interim peace deals with Israel.
In a punitive measure, Israel began withholding the funds on Nov. 1, a day after the Palestinians won membership in the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO as part of their unilateral, and slow-moving, drive for U.N. statehood recognition.
Israel has called on the Palestinians to abandon that bid and return to peace talks that collapsed in September 2010 over Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem which they say will deny them a viable state.
An Israeli government official said tax payments for October and November would be handed over to the Palestinian Authority, but Netanyahu made clear that he reserved the option to halt them again.
“Netanyahu approved the resumption of tax revenue transfers, at this stage, to the Palestinian Authority,” said a statement issued by the prime minister’s office after his inner Cabinet gave its backing.
The statement cited what it described as a suspension of “unilateral moves” by the Palestinian Authority, a reference to any further bids for status upgrades in U.N. bodies.
“If the Palestinian Authority takes unilateral steps again, the transfer of funds will be reconsidered,” it said.
Commenting on the decision to transfer the funds, Saleh Rafat, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said: “This is first of all Palestinian money ... Israel should have retracted this decision weeks ago.”
Last week, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the Palestinian Authority was “fast approaching the point of being completely incapacitated” and would not be able to pay about 150,000 workers this month if Israel did not release the money.