Smotrich wants to seize confiscated Palestinian funds to support his country’s budget (Reuters)
The specialized Israeli economic newspaper The Marker reported that Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich plans to pirate about 3 billion shekels ($835 million) of Palestinian Authority funds held by Israel.
The Marker (the economic supplement of Haaretz newspaper) explained that Smotrich seeks to increase public revenues by about $5.6 billion to support the draft general budget for the current year, which will be presented to the Knesset (Parliament) soon.
These revenues include funds held by the Israeli government that should have been transferred to the Palestinian Authority, but Smotrich wants to transfer them to serve the budget and fill the deficit.
The total amount of money that Israel has withheld from tax revenues owed to the Authority amounts to approximately $835 million, and is distributed as follows:
Money owed from 2018: $140 million.
Money owed from 2019: $128 million.
Money owed from 2020: $125 million.
Money due from 2021: $129 million.
Money due from 2022: $133 million.
Money due from 2023: $134 million.
One billion dollars is deducted by Israel annually from the funds of Palestinian merchants.. What are the clearance funds?
Why does the occupation confiscate it?
pic.twitter.com/0c3pZIvUnH
- AJ+ Arabic (@ajplusarabi) January 20, 2024
The Israeli governments seized and withheld this money over these years under the pretext that it was money paid by the authority to the families of prisoners and the families of martyrs in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
It is noteworthy that Israel collects taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in exchange for Palestinian imports of imported goods, and in return Israel deducts a 3% commission.
It is assumed that funds are transferred to the Authority on a monthly basis at an average of $190 million, of which, in normal circumstances, about $75 million is transferred to the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Authority relies on clearing funds to pay the salaries of its employees, and without them it will not be able to fulfill its obligations towards the wage bill and expenses of government institutions.
In the middle of last month, Palestinian Finance Minister Shukri Bishara said that Israel had not received clearance funds since last October (the start of the war on Gaza).
Last January, Israel agreed to transfer the clearance funds to the Palestinian side in exchange for deducting what the Gaza Strip was receiving from it to the State of Norway.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, leaving about 31,000 Palestinian martyrs and more than 72,000 injured, most of them children and women, in addition to an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe and massive destruction of infrastructure.
Source: Israeli press