Official: Israel’s decision to freeze hundreds of millions of Palestinian funds new attempt to target Palestinian institutions

Director of the Government Communication Center, Mohammed Abu al-Rub, said Tuesday that the Israeli occupation’s decision to freeze hundreds of millions of Palestinian funds was a new attempt to expand the circle of targeting the institutions of the State of Palestine.

Responding to an Israeli occupation court’s ruling freezing NIS 410 million of Palestinian funds to ensure compensation is available if the plaintiffs win a lawsuit filed against the Palestinian Authority, Abu al-Rub added that this move aims to render the Palestinian institutions incapable of fulfilling their obligations towards their people.

Reiterating the official Palestinian position rejecting Israeli blackmail, Abu al-Rub explained that the action was taken on two levels to deal with the Israeli step, namely at the international level and at the legal level.

At the international level, the Palestinian leadership was proceeding with the mobilization of international pressure to release withheld Palestinian funds with the help of variou
s friendly countries and international institutions, while at the legal level, the leadership was exerting efforts to challenge illegal Israeli decisions.

Abu al-Rub added that the Israeli occupation was waging an all-out war on the ground and imposing a stifling financial siege on Palestinians, deliberately deducting more than half of the monthly Palestinian clearance revenues, which are the main resource for public finances, pushing up the total amount of the withheld Palestinian funds to approximately NIS 7.5 billion, including more than NIS 3 billion as government allocations for the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, specifically in the form of the salaries of doctors, teachers, relief crews and various categories of employees.

He pointed out that the occupation authorities were also withholding more than NIS 3.5 billion of Palestinian funds under the pretext of being paid as stipends for the families of slain Palestinians and prisoners, in addition to about NIS 1 billion, which is the Palestinian f
inances’ share of the departure tax paid on the border crossings, that Israel has been withholding for several years.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA