Israel will not transfer a shekel of tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority
for the next four months, withholding the funds to repay itself after advancing
the PA money to pay salaries, and to pay the PA’s large electric and water
bills, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said on Tuesday.
Liberman, in a
tough speech in Tel Aviv on diplomatic issues delivered to Yisrael Beytenu
activists, said the PA owed Israel NIS 1.6 billion.
“They can forget
about seeing a single agora for the next four months,” he said, referring to the
NIS 400 million in tax and tariff revenue that Israel collects for the PA and
normally passes on to it each month.
Liberman said the funds to be
withheld were not Palestinian money, but rather money the PA owed Israel for
giving it advances earlier this year enabling it to pay salaries, and to cover
debts it owed for electricity, water and other services to Israeli
companies.
“First we will get back what we are owed, and then after four
months we will check and see what to do,” Liberman said. Israel paid NIS 900m.
to pay PA debts, and advanced it another NIS 700m. to pay salaries, he
said.
Israel came under intense criticism from the international
community last week after it decided – in addition to announcing planning for
homes in E1 in Ma’aleh Adumin, and other new construction plans beyond the Green
Line – to withhold the transfer of tax revenue to the PA in response to the
Palestinian’s successful upgrade of their status at the UN last
month.
Liberman’s comments came a day after the 27 EU foreign ministers
met in Brussels as the Foreign Affairs Council and, using unprecedentedly tough
language, blasted Israel for the E1 and settlement construction plans.
In
addition, the statement called on Israel to “avoid any step undermining the
financial situation of the Palestinian Authority. Any such action by Israel would
undermine existing cooperation mechanisms between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority and thus negatively affect the prospects of negotiations. Contractual
obligations, notably under the Paris Protocol [on Economic Relations of 1994],
regarding full, timely, predictable and transparent transfer of tax and custom
revenues have to be respected.”
That statement also said that the EU
would work to ensure that all agreements between Israel and the EU “must
unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories
occupied by Israel in 1967, namely the Golan Heights, the West Bank including
east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.”
According to diplomatic officials,
this means that future agreements between the EU and Israel will explicitly say
that they do not extend to areas beyond the Green Line.
Although this was
implicit in previous agreements, the likelihood that it will from now on be
spelled out in writing may make it much more difficult for Israel to enter into
such agreements.
Liberman, who slammed the council’s statement, said that
final resolution was toned down a bit from pervious drafts, thanks to “my
friend” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who he said worked to push
forward a tamer version.
Despite Westerwelle’s effort, Liberman said “it
is hard not to hear the lack of justice and imbalance in the
resolution.”
On one hand the statement condemned Israel in the strongest
terms for building in Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumin, and on the other hand, he
said, it found “inflammatory” statements by Hamas leaders calling for Israel’s
destruction as “unacceptable.”
Liberman said that the EU statement did
not fully reflect the mood of many EU foreign ministers at the meeting who
harshly condemned Israel and completely ignored Hamas.
“For them,” he
said, calls for “the destruction of Israel” were taken for granted. Without
mentioning names, he said some of these foreign ministers did not want to
mention Hamas in the statement at all.
Liberman added that this said
something about those countries that often claimed they understood Israel’s
security needs and would guarantee Israel’s security.
Echoing comments
made earlier in the day on Israel Radio comparing the actions of some European
governments now to actions during the Holocaust, Liberman said that the Jews
have seen in the past how certain European nations turned their eyes from the
evidence and pretended not to see when Jews were threatened with destruction and
sent to concentration camps.
In the Israel Radio interview, he compared
the EU’s polices now to the polices of European countries in the 1930s and
1940s.
“I am not happy with Europe’s position that for another time in
history it ignores calls to destroy Israel,” he said. “Hamas leaders said
repeatedly that their goal is clear – to destroy the State of Israel. And Europe
is quiet. The EU’s call yesterday was not condemnation of Hamas’s statements,
but a call for Hamas heads to refrain from inflammatory statements. We already
went through that with Europe at the end of the 1930s and in the
1940s.”
One European diplomatic source, responding to Liberman’s radio
comments, said the EU’s commitment to Israel’s security “is clear and was
repeated” by the foreign ministers in their statement on
Monday.
“Relations between the EU and Israel are strong and diverse,” the
source said.
“However, when we have differences, such as on the issue of
settlements, we make them known and will continue to do so.”
Yisrael
Beytenu chairman Liberman, in his speech on Tuesday evening, also blasted the
leaders of rival parties Labor, Meretz and Kadima, for blaming Israel for the
lack of diplomatic process and for continuing to consider PA President Mahmoud
Abbas a peace partner even though he was quiet as Hamas rained missiles down on
the South, and in the face of Hamas’s calls over the past few days for Israel’s
destruction.
Liberman, No. 2 on the Likud Beytenu candidates list, said
Abbas had come to the conclusion, with the help of those inside the country and
abroad who believed Israel was always to blame, that there was no need to
negotiate, and that he could get what he wanted without “having to give anything
in return to the Jews.”
The foreign minister also warned that another
round of rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel would lead to an immediate ground
incursion and the IDF’s taking control of the Gaza Strip, “regardless of the
price.”
The “world needs to understand” that Israel does not intend to
absorb any more rocket fire from Gaza, and that the next time its reaction would
not be limited to “surgical” air operations, Liberman said. “If there are again
missiles from Gaza it should be clear to all that there is no other
choice.”
The PA, meanwhile, welcomed the EU Foreign Affairs Council’s
“Conclusions on the Middle East Peace Process.”
But some PA officials
expressed disappointment over the EU stance, saying they were expecting a
tougher position against Israel. One official said the PA was hoping that the EU
would at least threaten to impose sanctions on Israel because of the decision to
build new housing in Jerusalem and in the West Bank.
Nimer Hammad,
political adviser to Abbas, said that entering negotiations with Israel “without
clear bases and criteria would be meaningless and unfruitful.”
Hammad
said that Israel must halt construction in the settlements, including natural
growth in these communities, in accordance with the EU announcement. “First
there should be a freeze of settlement construction and then we will talk about
the next steps,” he said.
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO Executive
Committee, said in response to the EU announcement: With Israel’s deliberate
campaign of provocations and violations of international law and signed
agreements, it is of utmost urgency for European countries to follow their
statements with bold initiatives and concrete steps before it is too
late.
She called on the EU to hold Israel accountable for its “illegal
occupation of Palestine, reconsider its political and trade relations with
Israel and agreements, including the EUIsrael Association agreement, implement a
ban on Israeli settler products and extremist settlers, and rescue the chances
for peace and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state based on
1967 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital.”
Khaled Abu Toameh
contributed to this report .