Israel withholds funds from Palestine over ICC move

Nearly Dh500 million due to Palestinian Authority from December's tax revenues collected by Israel.

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erakat has described Israel’s withholding of funds as a war crime. Atef Safadi / EPA November 23, 2010

JERUSALEM // Israel has decided to withhold critical tax revenue from the Palestinians and is seeking ways to bring war crimes prosecutions in the United States and elsewhere against president Mahmoud Abbas and other senior figures.

The moves are in retaliation to the Palestinians taking steps to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, with the aim of prosecuting Israelis for what they consider war crimes committed on their territory.

Palestinian official Saeb Erakat said Israel’s decision to withhold tax revenue from the Palestinians, announced yesterday, constitutes a war crime.

“This decision is a new Israeli war crime, but we won’t back off in the face of those pressures,” he said on Saturday.

On Friday, the Palestinians delivered documents to the UN’s headquarters in New York on joining the Rome Statute of the ICC – a key step in accepting the court’s jurisdiction – and other global treaties, saying they hoped to achieve “justice for all the victims that have been killed by Israel, the occupying power”.

The ICC was set up to try war crimes and crimes against humanity such as genocide. Israel and the United States object to unilateral approaches by the Palestinians to world bodies, saying they undermine prospects for negotiating a peaceful settlement of the decades-old conflict.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided in consultation with senior ministers on Thursday to withhold a monthly transfer of tax revenue totalling some 500 million shekels (Dh466.9m), an Israeli official said yesterday. It marks Israel’s first punitive response to the Palestinians’ bid to join the ICC.

The funds are critical to the running of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank – which has limited self-rule – and to paying public sector salaries. Israel took a similar step in December 2012, freezing revenue transfers for three months in anger at the Palestinians’ launch of a statehood recognition campaign at the United Nations.

Under interim peace deals from the 1990s, Israel collects at least US$100 million (Dh367.3m) a month in duties on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

In addition to the revenue freeze, an Israeli official said Israel was “weighing the possibilities for large-scale prosecution in the United States and elsewhere” of President Abbas and other senior Palestinians.

Israel would probably press these cases via non-governmental groups and pro-Israel legal organisations capable of filing lawsuits abroad, a second Israeli official said.

Israel sees the heads of the Palestinian Authority as collaborators with Hamas in Gaza because of a unity deal they forged in April, the officials also said.

Mr Netanyahu has previously warned that unilateral moves by the Palestinian Authority at the UN would expose its leaders to prosecution over support for Hamas, viewed by Israel as a terrorist organisation.

Washington sends about $400 million in economic support to the Palestinians every year. Under US law, that aid would be cut off if the Palestinians used membership in the ICC to press claims against Israel.

* Reuters with additional reporting by Agence France-Presse