Agencies/Jerusalem/Ramallah
Israel said yesterday it would transfer $470mn of withheld tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority following talks between a senior Israeli military officer and Palestinian officials.
In December, Israel began withholding around $130mn per month of taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinians after the Palestinian Authority announced it was joining the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Israel had condemned the Palestinian move to join the ICC, saying it was a unilateral step that undermined prospects for a negotiated peace settlement.
The move forced the Western-backed Palestinian Authority to cut most of its employees’ salaries by 40% and to resort to an emergency budget.
An Israeli government official, who declined to be named, said in a statement that 1.85bn shekels ($473mn) would be transferred after negotiations resulted in a deal.
The transfer was meant to ensure regional stability and for humanitarian considerations, the official said, but gave no further details. According to the statement, Israel’s state-owned electric corporation says it is owed about $510,000 by the Palestinians.
President Mahmoud Abbas informed a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organisation of the coming transfers yesterday, and said a joint Israeli-Palestinian committee would discuss outstanding sums.
The UN special co-ordinator for Middle East peace efforts, Nickolay Mladenov, welcomed the deal as an important step “in the right direction”.
Following international pressure, Israel agreed last month to resume the transfers and said it would pay $400mn, having deducted money it said the Palestinians owed for utilities and medical treatment.
However, Abbas said he would not accept this sum since Israel had made its deductions unilaterally. The current agreement appears to have resolved this issue.
“An agreement was reached to send three months’ worth of funds in full and a joint (Palestinian-Israeli) committee will discuss all the amounts that belong to us and what we owe,” Abbas said.
The Palestinian Authority employs some 160,000 people in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the rival Islamist Hamas movement.
Under an economic agreement signed in 1994, Israel transfers to the PA tens of millions of dollars each month in customs duties levied on goods destined for Palestinian markets that transit through Israeli ports.
Although transfer freezes have been imposed many times, they have rarely lasted more than one or two months, except in 2006 when Hamas won a landslide victory in Palestinian legislative polls and Israel withheld the funds for six months.
l A Palestinian driver deliberately rammed his car into a Jerusalem bus stop this week and killed an Israeli man, police chief Yohanan Danino said yesterday.
“Today we can say that it is a horrible attack,” Danino said in a statement after an investigation into Wednesday’s incident.
He ruled out initial suggestions that it had been an accident.
Shalom Yohai Cherki, 26, and Shira Klein, 20, were seriously injured in the attack on the bus stop in East Jerusalem.
Cherki, the son of prominent rabbi Ouri Cherki who is well known in the city’s francophone community, died of his injuries on Thursday morning and was buried later that day.
The driver, a 37-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem, who was also hurt, was arrested and interrogated by police.
Abbas chairs a meeting of the PLO executive committee in Ramallah yesterday.
