Israel’s Knesset Approves Law Freezing Palestinian Clearance Funds, Deepening Authority’s Financial Crisis

Israel’s Knesset approved a law to freeze the Palestinian “settlement” (clearance) fund, a move Anadolu Ajansı said would deepen the Palestinian Authority’s financial crisis.

“Palestinian Authority Finance Minister Estephan Salameh announced at a press conference that the amount of money Israel is withholding from the Palestinian Authority has now risen to $4”

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Anadolu Ajansı reported that the plenary approved the bill in the second and third readings, with support from 29 members out of 120 and five voting against, and said the proposal would become an enacted law.

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The law, as described by Anadolu Ajansı, would provide for deducting an amount from the funds Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority each year, with the amount set based on the report of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Anadolu Ajansı said the bill also provides for transferring the deducted funds to the state treasury, but that if there are debts outstanding from unpaid compensation to victims of terrorist attacks, the funds designated for those purposes would be used first.

Al-Jazeera Net said the Palestinian Authority described the move as an expansion of “stealing the Palestinian people’s money,” and said the Knesset approved the confiscation of funds from the Palestinian clearance funds in the second and third readings.

Anadolu Ajansı said Israel decided in 2019 to deduct amounts from the settlement fund for various pretexts, plunging the Authority into a financial crisis that left it unable to fully pay its employees’ salaries.

Anadolu Ajansı reported that in a statement to Anadolu Agency, the Knesset said it claimed the settlement funds are “money paid by the Palestinian Authority to terrorism,” and said the bill was initiated by Likud’s Avihai Boaron.

Agence Media Palestine

Al-Jazeera Net quoted the Palestinian Foreign Ministry rejecting the Israeli law as an “colonial action aimed at expanding the theft of the Palestinian people's money,” and said it condemned the ratification of the law in the second and third readings.

Al-Jazeera Net said the Palestinian Foreign Ministry described the step as a violation of signed agreements and international law, and as an escalation of Israeli measures against the Palestinian people and its institutions.

Anadolu Ajansı added that Israeli courts have ordered the Palestinian Authority to pay “tens of millions of dollars” in compensation to Israelis who say they were harmed by Palestinian operations, and said Smotrich had deducted these compensations from the settlement funds.

The financial squeeze described by Agence Media Palestine said Israel’s freezing of public funds designated for the Palestinian Authority has forced public schools in the occupied West Bank to open only three days a week.

“Israel's Knesset announced on Tuesday that it had approved the confiscation of funds from the Palestinian clearance funds, with the Palestinian Authority describing it as an expansion of 'stealing the Palestinian people's money'”

Al-Jazeera Net

Agence Media Palestine reported that the PA has been paying only 60% of public school teachers’ salaries since October 2023, and said this led institutions to operate only three days a week.

Agence Media Palestine said Israel has withheld nearly 8 billion shekels (about $2.3 billion) of PA tax revenues since 2019 as compensation payments to Palestinian prisoners’ families and Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.

Agence Media Palestine quoted Sayel Jabareen, a Palestinian father from Ramallah, saying, “everything is targeted,” and it said the Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich knows that withholding the compensation tax will stall the work of engineers, police, teachers — and freeze all social life.

In the same account, Agence Media Palestine said World Vision reported “9% of students have dropped out in the last two years,” and it added that the United Nations said nearly 900 military checkpoints have been established in the West Bank since Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023.