All the countries that encouraged Palestine to break their promises can pay the Palestine Authorities bill now if they really care, but I doubt they do. Lip service doesn't pay the bills. If the world cares so much for the Palestinians then put up or shut up. oh... but they don't love the Arabs, they merely hate Jews.
(NYTIMES) RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian Authority, in over its head financially as foreign donors renege on pledges and local banks have reached their limits, has an even more serious money problem: Israel is refusing to transfer tax and customs payments that account for two-thirds of its revenue.
For three weeks, the Israeli government has pointedly withheld the transfer of these payments, amounting to more than $100 million, to express opposition to the Palestinian Authority’s recent policy of pursuing United Nations membership and renewing power-sharing talks with Hamas.
The impact of Israel’s decision not to make its deposit could be devastating, according to Palestinian and international officials.
“With each passing day, the Palestinian Authority becomes weaker, and is fast approaching the day when it becomes completely incapacitated,” Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said in an interview this week.
Oussama Kanaan, the International Monetary Fund’s mission chief for the West Bank and Gaza, said that unless Israel changed its approach, salaries due on Dec. 1 that support one million Palestinians would go unpaid.
“Part of the reason why people have not revolted is that there has been some progress and security, and the living standard has been going up,” he said. “But if they cannot get their wages paid and they have high expectations about independence, they will see this as a sign of weakness and incompetence by the Palestinian Authority.”
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations and senior American officials have contacted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in recent days, urging him to release the money. Tony Blair, the representative of the so-called quartet — the Middle East peacemaking group composed of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — added his voice to the criticism on Wednesday, saying, “Only those who oppose peace and Israeli-Palestinian cooperation benefit from the withholding of P.A. funds.”
An aide to Mr. Netanyahu said the point was to “incentivize bad things not happening.” By that, he meant the Palestinian Authority’s pursuit of full membership in the United Nations and its planned talks with Hamas, expected to start on Thursday in Cairo.
But the aide said that if the Palestinians did not move to join other United Nations agencies — he said they had indicated a willingness to back off for now — and the Cairo meeting produced nothing more than promises of more meetings, the likelihood was that the money would be released by next week.
“We are trying to send a clear message,” he said.
Another Israeli official said that when the decision was made to withhold payment around Nov. 1, there had been several troubling developments from Israel’s point of view. First, he said, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said nothing after a rocket from Gaza killed someone in southern Israel. Then Mr. Abbas seemed to praise the abduction of an Israeli soldier five years ago and said he would never recognize a Jewish state. Finally, the Palestinians joined Unesco — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — a move that Israel rejected as another unilateral step toward statehood.
“We wanted to make clear this could not be business as usual,” the official said. “The idea is to influence Palestinian decision-making.”
The transfer of the more than $100 million a month is not, in theory, optional. It is mandated by the 1994 portion of the Oslo agreement. The money is made up of customs duties that Israel collects for Palestinian orders arriving here through Israeli ports, value-added taxes on major Palestinian purchases of Israeli goods and excise taxes on Israeli fuel bought by the Palestinians.
But the Israelis argue that by approaching the United Nations and engaging with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority is breaking its end of the Oslo accords, freeing Israel to do the same.
The United States has suspended tens of millions of dollars it has pledged to the Palestinian Authority because of Congressional objections that mirror those of Israel.
Israel has withheld payments before, notably during the 2001-2 uprising and again in 2006, when the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and Hamas briefly formed a unity government. Foreign donors, mostly from the Arab world and the European Union, made up the difference.
That pattern has eased concerns here.
“The Authority has never collapsed, and it will not do so now,” , the chief executive of the Palestinian Stock Exchange, said in an interview. “The Arab Spring obliges the Arab countries to act in ways they are not used to. And the Israelis can rant and rave all they want. In the end, it is in their interest to help us.”
Indeed, it is widely agreed in the Israeli military establishment that a functioning Palestinian Authority is in Israel’s interest because, without it, Israel would have to police and provide civilian services to millions of Palestinians. But as the aide to Mr. Netanyahu said when asked about that, “True, but that is not our only interest.”
Relations between the two sides have deteriorated, and senior Israeli leaders, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, have publicly argued for withholding the Palestinian transfers. Mr. Netanyahu has not gone that far.
At the same time, the Israeli and Palestinian Finance Ministry panels working on the tax and customs transfers have recently made important strides together, reducing leakage and increasing revenues, both sides said.
Mr. Fayyad noted that since the Europeans were facing their own fiscal crises and the Arabs had not come forward with pledged donations, it made little sense to assume either would come to the rescue now. In the past two years, the authority has set up institutions as part of its ambition to be ready for statehood, and that has made fiscal reliability all the more important.
“If we can’t meet our contractual obligations, that has a chilling effect on the private sector,” Mr. Fayyad said. “This undermines confidence in the Palestinian Authority’s capacity to function, which has a debilitating effect on investor confidence. Like a family, a government can make do with less — but not a drop of two-thirds.”
Actually it is more simple then this. when Palestine unilaterally went to the U.N. to ask for statehood it broke the Oslo agreement. It isn't the Israeli opinion. It is a legal fact. The NYTimes is lying. They have no right to ask for funding if they broke their promises.
The impact of Israel’s decision not to make its deposit could be devastating, according to Palestinian and international officials.
“With each passing day, the Palestinian Authority becomes weaker, and is fast approaching the day when it becomes completely incapacitated,” Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said in an interview this week.
Oussama Kanaan, the International Monetary Fund’s mission chief for the West Bank and Gaza, said that unless Israel changed its approach, salaries due on Dec. 1 that support one million Palestinians would go unpaid.
“Part of the reason why people have not revolted is that there has been some progress and security, and the living standard has been going up,” he said. “But if they cannot get their wages paid and they have high expectations about independence, they will see this as a sign of weakness and incompetence by the Palestinian Authority.”
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations and senior American officials have contacted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in recent days, urging him to release the money. Tony Blair, the representative of the so-called quartet — the Middle East peacemaking group composed of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — added his voice to the criticism on Wednesday, saying, “Only those who oppose peace and Israeli-Palestinian cooperation benefit from the withholding of P.A. funds.”
An aide to Mr. Netanyahu said the point was to “incentivize bad things not happening.” By that, he meant the Palestinian Authority’s pursuit of full membership in the United Nations and its planned talks with Hamas, expected to start on Thursday in Cairo.
But the aide said that if the Palestinians did not move to join other United Nations agencies — he said they had indicated a willingness to back off for now — and the Cairo meeting produced nothing more than promises of more meetings, the likelihood was that the money would be released by next week.
“We are trying to send a clear message,” he said.
Another Israeli official said that when the decision was made to withhold payment around Nov. 1, there had been several troubling developments from Israel’s point of view. First, he said, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said nothing after a rocket from Gaza killed someone in southern Israel. Then Mr. Abbas seemed to praise the abduction of an Israeli soldier five years ago and said he would never recognize a Jewish state. Finally, the Palestinians joined Unesco — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — a move that Israel rejected as another unilateral step toward statehood.
“We wanted to make clear this could not be business as usual,” the official said. “The idea is to influence Palestinian decision-making.”
The transfer of the more than $100 million a month is not, in theory, optional. It is mandated by the 1994 portion of the Oslo agreement. The money is made up of customs duties that Israel collects for Palestinian orders arriving here through Israeli ports, value-added taxes on major Palestinian purchases of Israeli goods and excise taxes on Israeli fuel bought by the Palestinians.
But the Israelis argue that by approaching the United Nations and engaging with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority is breaking its end of the Oslo accords, freeing Israel to do the same.
The United States has suspended tens of millions of dollars it has pledged to the Palestinian Authority because of Congressional objections that mirror those of Israel.
Israel has withheld payments before, notably during the 2001-2 uprising and again in 2006, when the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and Hamas briefly formed a unity government. Foreign donors, mostly from the Arab world and the European Union, made up the difference.
That pattern has eased concerns here.
“The Authority has never collapsed, and it will not do so now,” , the chief executive of the Palestinian Stock Exchange, said in an interview. “The Arab Spring obliges the Arab countries to act in ways they are not used to. And the Israelis can rant and rave all they want. In the end, it is in their interest to help us.”
Indeed, it is widely agreed in the Israeli military establishment that a functioning Palestinian Authority is in Israel’s interest because, without it, Israel would have to police and provide civilian services to millions of Palestinians. But as the aide to Mr. Netanyahu said when asked about that, “True, but that is not our only interest.”
Relations between the two sides have deteriorated, and senior Israeli leaders, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, have publicly argued for withholding the Palestinian transfers. Mr. Netanyahu has not gone that far.
At the same time, the Israeli and Palestinian Finance Ministry panels working on the tax and customs transfers have recently made important strides together, reducing leakage and increasing revenues, both sides said.
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| ...NO MORE MONEY FOR OUR MURDER... |
“If we can’t meet our contractual obligations, that has a chilling effect on the private sector,” Mr. Fayyad said. “This undermines confidence in the Palestinian Authority’s capacity to function, which has a debilitating effect on investor confidence. Like a family, a government can make do with less — but not a drop of two-thirds.”
