Start of new settlement project
When I wrote the last paragraph of my blog ‘Palestine’s U.N. nonmember status makes peace more elusive’, dated December 01, 2012, little did I know that I was having the right hunch of what it would be for the Palestinians after its de facto recognition by the UN from observer status to a “non-member state.”
This is what I said: ‘That is the key – not isolating Israel, but rather recognizing it as the Jewish people’s state and that could only be achieve through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and not via a symbolic vote at the UN General Assembly that would only make peace as elusive as ever and the situation more hellish than it already is.’
Not only has the Palestinian victory been short-lived, but the goal of having two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security not only seems harder to achieve now, but Israel is, in fact, starting making the lives of the Palestinians miserable.
It looked like the Israelis already knew what to do if the Palestinians pursued their plan of seeking an upgrade of their status at the UN, for hours after the UN vote, Israel immediately authorized 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and expediting planning work for thousands more dwellings in a geographically sensitive area close to Jerusalem, which critics said would kill off Palestinian hopes of a viable state.
Both the United States and the United Kingdom criticized the expansion plan, saying, it was counterproductive to the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks frozen since 2010.
Not only that. Israel has now announced that it was withholding this month’s transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said that Israel would not collect taxes on the Palestinians’ behalf, nor deliver the moneys to the PA, nor assist Ramallah in any economic matters.
Under the current economic agreements between Israel and the PA, Israel collects customs, border and some income taxes on behalf of the Palestinians and transfers the sums to Ramallah on a monthly basis.
Steinitz said that the government instead would use the money it was to transfer to the Palestinians to pay down their debt to the Israel Electric Corporation and other Israeli bodies.
“I have no intention of transferring the taxes due to the PA this month. They will be used to pay the PA debts to the Israeli electricity company and other bodies,” Steinitz said.
Without the transfer, the PA will not have the money to pay government salaries.
Only time can tell what else the Israelis have in mind for the Palestinians, who are being punished for allegedly leapfrogging negotiations and disregarding peace accords.
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