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Behind the Palestinian Economic Crisis: Israel Wants the PA to Stop Supporting Terror

(Channel 11 TV-Israel-Hebrew) Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser - Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and former head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence, discussed the Palestinian Authority's latest economic crisis on Israel's Channel 11 TV on Monday: Israel wants the PA to stop supporting terror. That's why the money that the PA uses to pay the salaries of terrorists or their families is being deducted from the funds Israel transfers to them. And they're nice salaries too, that grow according to the severity of the terrorist attack. That is why Israel argues: "We didn't sign the Oslo Accords in order to get this." We didn't endure all this stress and relinquish territory in order to enable the Palestinians to execute deadlier attacks against us. For this reason, Israel is trying to communicate to the Palestinians that they must cease the detrimental behavior of rewarding terrorists. What does Abbas want? He wants to achieve legitimacy so that this course of action can continue. That is why he is willing to forego the 660 million shekels from Israel. Israel's interest is that the PA survives financially, not in a manner in which they will encourage terror, but the opposite. We do not want them to function at all costs, but rather on the condition that they uphold their commitments outlined in the Oslo Accords and according to international law, which is to fight terror, not encourage it. The PA supports terror. It pays 1.27 billion shekels yearly to terrorists and their families. The main point here is not the 40 million shekels that Israel is withholding from the PA. The Americans withheld 1 billion shekels from the Palestinians, based on U.S. unwillingness to transfer money to the PA while it encourages terrorism. If the Palestinians stop encouraging and financing terror, then the funds being withheld will more than likely return to them, since Israel does not withhold the funds simply to make the Palestinians miserable.
2019-05-01 00:00:00
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