Palestinians suffer financially as US prepares Mideast plan

Israel and the United States are putting the financial squeeze on the Palestinian Authority (PA), where opposition to a long-awaited US peace plan and anger over Israeli sanctions remain strong.

Analysts see steep cuts in US aid to the Palestinians over the past year as an attempt to draw them towards a blueprint that Washington promises will have economic benefits but which the PA predicts will fall short of endorsing Palestinian statehood.

And during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s successful re-election campaign, his right-wing government imposed sanctions that have pushed the PA towards financial crisis.

In February, Israel announced it would cut by 5 per cent the approximately $190 million in tax revenues it transfers to the Palestinian Authority each month from imports that reach the occupied West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza Strip via Israeli ports.

The deducted sum represents the amount of money paid by the PA, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, to families of Palestinians convicted and jailed by Israel for security offences, including lethal attacks on Israelis. Palestinians hail their jailed brethren as heroes in a struggle for an independent state and their families as deserving of support.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to accept the partial tax remittances from Israel, saying the PA is entitled to all the money under interim peace deals.

Unless the issue is resolved, the World Bank says, the Palestinians’ financing gap could exceed $1 billion in 2019, putting further strain on an economy grappling with a 52 per cent unemployment rate.

Already facing international donor fatigue, the Palestinians were dealt a heavy blow by the Trump administration’s cut last year of hundreds of millions of dollars of aid.

In February, the US Agency for International Development announced it had ceased all assistance to the West Bank and Gaza.

While the United States and Israel are applying financial pressure to the Palestinian Authority for different reasons, it is happening just as the PA is being leant on to accept the US peace plan.

Palestinian suspicions over the still-secret US proposals, due to be announced in June, and defiance of Israeli sanctions continue to run deep despite the arm-twisting.

Khalid Al Asili, the Palestinian Authority’s economy minister, told reporters in an interview last week that it has been struggling to manage on just 36 per cent of budgeted revenues.

The Palestinian Authority slashed the salaries of government employees in February, March and April to weather the budget crisis, with some Palestinian public servants’ wages cut in half.

“Unless they find a solution... it will be a disaster for the Palestinian economy,” Asili said.

With Trump’s “deal of the century” about to be unveiled, Tareq Baconi, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, questioned the wisdom of Washington’s financial pressure on the Palestinians.

Such a strategy, he said, stemmed from the “misguided belief that economic benefits could be sufficiently compelling for Palestinians to relinquish their political demands.”

One of the architects of the Trump plan, the president’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, declined to say in public remarks in Washington last week whether it called for a two-state solution, a goal of past efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Abbas and his officials have refused to deal at a political level with the Trump administration since the US president’s recognition of occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017 and his move of the US embassy to the holy city last May.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh has rejected out of hand “any political initiative that does not call for ending Israeli occupation and establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian state with occupied Jerusalem as its capital.” The Palestinians have long sought to set up a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War.

Netanyahu further clouded the statehood issue when he said during the election race that he would annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank if he wins, a move that Palestinian leaders said would kill any prospects of peace.

While both sides await the US proposals, the financial sanctions on the Palestinian Authority could be a double-edged sword, posing risks to its stability and for Israel as well.

Reuters