Israel freezes another $100m in Palestinian tax revenues

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has frozen an additional 400 million shekels ($100 million) from Palestinian tax revenues, Israel Today revealed yesterday.

The funds were from January’s tax revenues, the newspaper said, and will be added to the 500 million shekels ($128 million) that Israel froze in December, making the amount of Palestinian tax revenues frozen about $228 million.

Sources close to Netanyahu told the newspaper that he promised continuous tax freezes as a punishment for the Palestinian leadership’s application to join the International Criminal Court.

Such revenues constitute 70 per cent of the Palestinian Authority’s source of income which finance the bulk of salaries and public services in the West Bank such as hospitals and schools.

It is worth mentioning that the money freeze last month faced critical reactions from the UN, US and many EU countries, but none of them put any pressure on Israel to recede its decision.

Sources reported by the Israeli newspaper said that the situation in the West Bank is expected to explode because of the hard economic circumstances as a result of lack of funds.