TEL AVIV // Israel will not allow its soldiers to appear in front of the International Criminal Court if charged with war crimes, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.
The statement came after Israel said it would withhold US$127 million (Dh466.5m) in taxes that is collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in retaliation for the Palestinians’ application to join the ICC last week.
“We will not let Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers and officers be dragged to the International Criminal Court in The Hague,” Mr Netanyahu said.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas formally applied to join the court last week, after the United Nations Security Council voted down a resolution that set a 2017 deadline for ending the decades-old Israeli occupation.
The request would allow the ICC – which Israel has not joined – to launch war crimes investigations in the Palestinian territories.
The tax money Israel says it will withhold is meant to be transferred to Ramallah each month and represents almost two-thirds of the PA’s revenue.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, called withholding the taxes an act of “piracy” on Sunday and warned that it could bring the collapse of the PA by leaving it unable to pay salaries.
Gilad Erdan, a senior member of the ruling Likud party, told Israel’s Channel 2 on Saturday night that the freeze “is not the last step.” The cabinet is due to discuss other measures this week, which could include other economic sanctions and revoking the VIP travel permits of Palestinian officials.
Members of the US Congress, including representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Middle East subcommittee, have talked of cutting the roughly $400 million that the PA receives annually from Washington. The US is the second-largest donor to the cash-strapped Palestinian government after the European Union.
“The Palestinian Authority has chosen confrontation with Israel and we will not sit idly by,” Mr Netanyahu said on Sunday before a weekly cabinet meeting.
The director-general of Israel’s foreign ministry told diplomats on Sunday, however, that the response will not include accelerated construction in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Yet a number of Israeli officials have recently come out in favour of doing exactly that.
Yuval Steinitz, the intelligence minister and a confidante of Mr Netanyahu, last week suggested dissolving the PA altogether. Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday that the Palestinian request to join the ICC “demonstrates that the Oslo Accords have failed.”
The 1993 Accords created the PA and gave it limited autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza.
Mr Netanyahu, however, has been reluctant to take dramatic action against the PA, which continues to cooperate closely with Israeli security agencies. If the PA ceased to exist then Israel would be responsible for governing the West Bank, including managing health and education services, as well as security.
Indeed, while he has suspended the transfers of funds several times before to punish the Palestinians, the freeze was always lifted within weeks to avoid serious repercussions to the PA.
“Joining the ICC was the nuclear option, and now it’s been done,” said Nathan Thrall, a Jerusalem-based analyst with the International Crisis Group. “So do you carry out the threats just for the sake of your own credibility? There are people in the government who would be happy to see the PA dissolve … but so far [Netanyahu] is acting much more pragmatically.”
A lengthy suspension would also worsen a months-old financial crisis in the Gaza Strip. Last April, Mr Abbas’ Fatah movement agreed to form a unity government with Hamas, the militant group and political party that controls the besieged territory.
The deal put the PA in charge of paying public-sector employees in Gaza, who had been paid by Hamas since 2007.
But Ramallah has balked at footing the bill, claiming it cannot afford to pay without a major infusion of international aid. Hamas has recently warned that the crisis could push the region back into war, months after a deadly summer conflict that killed more than 2,200 people.
“The ministries in Gaza already have no financial resources,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman told The National. “Even the security men are not getting paid … there is a real problem, and everyone will pay the price. If the security forces are absent, it means the whole strip will be insecure.”
Mr Netanyahu’s domestic political foes also criticised the decision to withhold tax revenue.
“Half a billion shekels is exactly the money that will destroy the Palestinian Authority, stop security coordination, and endanger every Israeli citizen,” said Zehava Gal-On, head of the liberal Meretz party.
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The Facts:
The PA does not have its own borders or ports, so Israel collects duties on imported goods bound for the West Bank. It also gathers VAT on products that are sold in Israel but intended for consumption in the territories.
The PA levies its own internal taxes, but the money collected by Israel represents about two-thirds of the authority’s revenue, more than US$100 million (Dh367m) per month.
Israel is meant to transfer these funds to the PA each month, but it has withheld the money as a political punishment on at least a half-dozen occasions. It suspended transfers in 2011 and 2012, when the Palestinians were pursuing enhanced membership at the United Nations, and again last year, when Fatah and Hamas agreed to form a unity government.
The sanctions in 2012 prompted some 50,000 government employees in the West Bank to stage a general strike over unpaid salaries.
Israel has also taken millions from the Palestinian taxes it collects to pay the PA’s outstanding debts to the Israeli electric company, which supplies the West Bank with much of its power.