Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich pledged not to allow the transfer of Palestinian tax funds to Gaza, or to the families of the Palestinian attackers, he said on Monday, hinting that he would resign from the government rather than pass the transfer.
Smotrich was referring to reports of an agreement brokered by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to enable the Palestinian Authority to send money to its employees in Gaza, by allowing Israel to verify the beneficiaries of the funds.
Israel collects taxes monthly on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in exchange for Palestinian imports of imported goods, and then settles debts owed by the Palestinians to Israeli water, electricity, and hospital companies, but it has increasingly refrained from doing so for various reasons, most notably the Palestinian Authority’s payment of salaries to those whom Israel condemns as “terrorists.” And “the families of the murdered terrorists.”
She recently said that she would not allow the Palestinian Authority to transfer funds allocated for services and salaries in the Gaza Strip, claiming that the funds could reach the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), with which Israel is at war.
Pass and reject
Last November, the Israeli Security Council of Ministers approved a partial transfer of tax funds, after deducting about $275 million allocated by the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, in addition to salaries, but the Palestinian Authority refused, raising fears of the possibility of its financial collapse and creating a state of crisis. Chaos in the West Bank.
During the weekly meeting of his far-right Religious Zionist Party, Smotrich referred to a Channel 12 report that he broadcast the day before yesterday, Sunday, which stated that Israel had agreed to transfer the full funds, on the condition that it was able to verify the list of beneficiaries in Gaza, to ensure that the funds did not reach Hamas.
The Finance Minister pledged not to allow the transfer of “even a single shekel” of funds to “Nazi Hamas” in Gaza, as he described it, or to the families of “terrorists” from the West Bank and Gaza, and said that he informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he was “willing to pay the price if The government, God forbid, yielded to this pressure.”
He added, “I want to say as clearly as possible that this will never happen… as long as I am the Minister of Finance of the State of Israel.”
Right-wing support
For his part, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, head of the extremist nationalist Otzma Yehudit party, supported his colleague in the government’s position on withholding tax funds at his party’s meeting, criticizing his government’s policy of allowing fuel and other humanitarian aid to enter Gaza during the war.
He expressed his regret for the failure to present legislation allowing the death penalty for those he described as “terrorists,” noting that this would enable Israel to execute a prisoner from the elite force of the Al-Qassam Brigades, from among those captured during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, for every day that Hamas does not release him. Israeli prisoners.
The families of hostages held in Gaza protested against Ben Gvir; Because of his focus on this issue, they said that he was putting “their loved ones in danger through his rhetoric and efforts,” according to the newspaper.