In a move which he dubbed “historic justice”, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Tuesday directed the seizure of Palestinian Authority tax funds and their transfer to families of victims of terror, according to a Yisrael Hayom report.
Smotrich ordered the Tax Authority to deduct an amount of NIS 130 million ($35 million) from the Palestinian Authority’s tax money, and transfer it to 28 families of terror victims, according to the report.
The Finance Minister had instructed Tax Authority Director Eran Ya’akov this past January to transfer NIS 138.8 million from the funds frozen under the “Law of Freezing of Funds Paid by the Palestinian Authority in Linkage with Terror from the Funds Transferred to it by the Israeli Government, 5778 – 2018.”
The move came as the implementation of a judicial verdict stating that the Palestinian Authority should pay the families of terror victims NIS 130 million.
The Palestinian Authority has refused for decades to pay compensation to the families of terror victims, despite Israeli court orders directing the Ramallah government to do so. Instead, the PA routinely pays salaries to terrorists and their families in a widely criticized “pay-for-slay” policy. The United States Congress has passed two laws mandating the cessation of foreign aid funds to the PA until the Ramallah government stops paying its citizens to kill their neighbors, but the Biden Administration has consistently sought and found ways to circumvent the law.
In recent years, a number of laws have been enacted in Israel that opened a legal door to the confiscation of PA funds, but their implementation was opposed by security establishment for fear of harming the financial stability of the Palestinian Authority.
Smotrich decided that the funds to be transferred to the families should come from the frozen Palestinian Authority tax funds. The State of Israel collects taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, and then transfers those funds to the Ramallah government. Under the 2018 law, however, a portion of those funds equaling the amount paid monthly by the Palestinian Authority to convicted terrorists are withheld.
.“There is no greater justice than recompensing out of the funds of the Palestinian Authority that endeavored to support terrorism and transferring them to the families of the victims of terrorism,” Smotrich said in January.
“The Israeli government is changing its policy and today we are starting to rectify it. There is no consolation here for the families of those that were murdered, but justice is implemented by this. I am pleased that I had the privilege of leading this rectifying process as one of my first actions as Minister of Finance.”
Herzl Hajaj, father of the late IDF Lieutenant Shir Hajaj who was murdered in a PA-orchestrated terrorist attack on January 8, 2017 in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv, noted that the families of the terror victims set themselves the goals of preventing further attacks and seizing the funds used by the PA to pay the terrorists.
“This is how we create deterrence; this is how we prevent the next family from bereavement. We ask all the ministers to act to deter the next terrorist,” Hajaj said.
The decision to expropriate the PA tax funds could set a new precedent, as there are hundreds of lawsuits by families of terror victims against the PA which are still in legal proceedings in Israeli courts. The Finance Ministry says that Smotrich’s decision gives the green light for further expropriations which will lead to many more lawsuits as victims of terror realize that they could gain from suing the PA.
Smotrich has taken other steps against the PA, including refusing to transfer payments to PA officials in Gaza out of fear that they will wind up in the hands of Hamas. He has also started to defray a 2 billion NIS debt which the PA has to Israel for providing electricity, a debt which hasn’t been paid for many years.
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