BETHLEHEM, Saturday, February 16, 2019 (WAFA) – Prime Minister of the caretaker Palestinian government, Rami Hamdallah, said on Saturday that the government has developed scenarios to cope with any potential deductions by Israel off the tax revenues the latter collects on behalf of the Palestinian government.

Speaking during an official tour of a stone-cutting factory in Bethlehem district, south of the West Bank, Hamdallah said scenarios have been put in place to deal with any deduction in tax revenues equal to the amounts of the salaries the government pays to the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the families of those killed by the Israeli occupation forces.

“The families of the martyrs and the prisoners have a right and a duty upon us, as President Mahmoud Abbas has said. Their [salaries] are our duty and a debt owed by us,” the Prime Minister said.

Last year, Israel passed a law allowing the Israeli government to withhold millions of dollars in tax revenues it collects every month on behalf of the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords. Recently, Israeli media sources reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the deduction will go ahead.

The monthly customs revenues Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority amount to more than $120 million, while the deducted money will be about $32 million.

On February 12, the Palestinian representative at the UN Human Rights Council, Ibrahim Khreisheh, said that the Palestinian Authority will complain to the HRC about Israel‘s intention to consider such deductions. 

Palestinians say such payments are a key source of income for families who have lost their main breadwinner.

Israel currently detains some 6,000 Palestinians for resisting its occupation of the Palestinian territories. The detainees are considered political prisoners in Palestinian society.

M.N