Over the past several years, Israeli courts have ordered the Palestinian Authority to pay compensation worth tens of millions of dollars to Israelis who claim to have been harmed by Palestinian attacks.
While Smotrich has been deducting these compensation payments from clearance revenues, this law turns the deductions into legislation rather than merely ministerial instructions.
Last month, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa accused Israel of “suffocating” the occupied West Bank through “political, security, and colonial tools, in addition to the continued deduction of Palestinian clearance revenues.”
“These deductions have escalated over the past 12 months, as Israel has not transferred any tax and customs revenues to the state treasury,” he said.
Under the Paris Economic Protocol, an annex to the Oslo Agreement signed in 1994 between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli Ministry of Finance collects clearance revenues at border crossings.
In return for this collection service, Israel receives 3 percent of the total deducted clearance revenues, whose annual value reaches approximately $102 million.
Related
