Israel will withhold Palestinian tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority if President Mahmoud Abbas presses forward with a United Nations statehood bid, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz warned on Saturday.
As the occupying power in Palestine, Israel has control of tax revenues of the Palestinian Authority, and as punishment for seeking peaceful independence from that occupation, Steinitz said Israel would not collect taxes on the PA’s behalf, nor delivery any money to the PA, nor assist in economic matters.
Steinitz noted that the Palestinians backed down from a previous statehood bid at the UN last year right after Israel blocked the transfer of Palestinian tax funds to the PA.
Israel is desperate to block a peaceful, internationally observed Palestinian independence through the United Nations because it ruins Israeli plans to take over all of historic Palestine – the rest of the West Bank and Gaza.
Unfortunately, Israel threatens to withhold what is rightfully the taxes due the Palestinian Authority for political reasons. It is a threatened action which parallels the embargo of Gaza, i.e., the withholding of supplies, equipment and humanitarian aid that would help the Gazans to be self-sufficient. It is a political policy which hurts the rank and file in an effort to achieve a desired political outcome. I find this to be immoral and unbecoming the State of Israel. It is a proposed policy that will not increase positive attitudes towards the State.
This would be a good thing. It is time to end the farce of the PA. It is a Quisling puppet of the occupation anyway.
Time for a civil rights movement, equal rights for all governed by Israel.
Starving the people of Gaza has worked well for stopping Hamas. Stealing their money will surely work wonders for stopping the PA. Oh, yeah, and the economic terrorism against Iran is also working wonders, I hear.
So this is clear, what Isreal is threatening to do is simply steal the taxes that, for some ungodly reason known only to them, they "collect" on behalf of Palestine. These taxes rightfully do to them for whatever little industry and export they have. Isreal, ever the willing neocolonialist, simply acts as the tax collector and withholds those revenues on a regular basis as a means of punishment and blackmail. All's well that goes well in the ZioNazis land.