The Palestinian Authority is licking its wounds following the Israeli Defense Cabinet’s announcement of the imposition of sanctions on the PA following its appeals to the United Nations and the International Court of Justice in The Hague against Israel.
The
Israeli sanctions came into effect after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich signed an order cutting 139 million shekels from its funds from
the taxes that Israel collects for the PA in order to transfer them to the families of Israeli victims of terrorist acts.
The PA , at the order of Abu Mazen, launched a political and legal campaign against Israel in the international arena, and now the Netanyahu government is collecting the price from it.|
The
Security establishment opposes a complete break with the Palestinian Authority, which could lead to an increase in terrorist activities, and senior officials in the security establishment sent messages to the PA that Israel is not interested in escalating or weakening the PA or disbanding it.
The Biden administration is not satisfied, to say the least, with the Netanyahu government’s sanctions against the Palestinian Authority, this contradicts its policy towards the Palestinian Authority, which was also implemented by the Lapid-Ganz government, providing economic and civil concessions to the Palestinian Authority in order to strengthen its position on the Palestinian street, in view of the strengthening of the position of Hamas since the IDF operation in the IDF Strip in May 2021.
In the meantime, the administration remains silent, but US Secretary of State Tony Blinken is expected to arrive in Israel at the end of the month in order to understand in depth where the Netanyahu government is headed and to prepare for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Washington in the next month.
Senior PA sources say that PA Chairman Abu Mazen is afraid of canceling security coordination with Israel because this could lead to a deepening of the crisis with Israel and harm the Palestinians themselves in regards to the work of Palestinian workers in Israel, treatment of Palestinian patients in hospitals in Israel, the Palestinian VIP movement and more.
His tactic is to give the Biden administration an opportunity to return the situation to normal, he estimates that President Biden will apply the necessary pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu and bend him.
Palestinian journalist Ziyad Abu Zayad, who was the Minister of Jerusalem Affairs in the Palestinian Authority, called the PA to place roadblocks
at the entrance to Palestinian cities
in the West Bank and to prevent the introduction of Israeli goods into them in response to the sanctions that Israel has taken against the Palestinian Authority, but the PA rejects his proposal.
The security coordination between Israel and the PA will probably not be damaged at this stage, the Palestinian Authority froze it in June 2020 for a period of several months and regretted it, but the concern in the Palestinian Authority is especially great over the Israeli decision to freeze Palestinian construction in .Area C, which is about 62 percent of the West Bank
The PA sees this as a gradual step by the Netanyahu government towards annexing the West Bank to Israel.
A senior Palestinian official says that Israel treats areas C as Israeli lands and as a reserve for the expansion of settlements,
Israel holds the lifeblood of the Palestinians in the West Bank, their tax money, the work of tens of thousands of workers in Israel and the lands in areas C, he emphasizes.
The bottom line is that it seems that PA Chairman Abu Mazen will be reluctantly forced to put up with the Israeli sanctions, the most important thing for him is his survival in power and preventing the collapse of the PA, for him, the establishment of the PA was the greatest Palestinian achievement of the Oslo Accords and it is the core of the establishment of the independent Palestinian state.
