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March 2, 2001/Adar 7, 5761, Vol. 53, No.22
Critics fault Israeli economics sanctions
AVI MACHLIS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - As the Palestinian intifada continues into its sixth month, international attention has shifted from the daily death toll to the tough economic measures Israel has imposed on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The measures include closing passages between the Palestinian-ruled territories and Israel proper, which keeps tens of thousands of Palestinians from working in Israel; travel restrictions that often prevent Palestinians from traveling between cities and villages in the West Bank; and withholding tax and customs money that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
Israel says the measures are designed to prevent Palestinians from launching terror attacks and to pressure the Palestinian Authority to start clamping down on violence.
But critics in the United States and Europe say Israel is only embittering the Palestinian population and pushing the Palestinian Authority to the brink of collapse.
Recent U.N. reports indicate that Palestinian unemployment is rampant, poverty has jumped 50 percent since the violence began in late September and one-third of the Palestinian population lives below the poverty line.
The United Nations also has warned that the Palestinian Authority is on the verge of financial collapse: Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat claims he is unable to pay the salaries of civil servants and security forces.
On his first visit to the region last week, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell urged Israel to lift the blockade it has imposed on the Palestinian territories as soon as possible.
Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister-elect, says he will quickly lift the sanctions - as soon as the Palestinians stop the violence. With Palestinian security forces implicated in numerous shooting and terror attacks on Israelis in recent months, Israel is saying, in essence, that it will no longer subsidize its attackers.
"Israel has no interest in a difficult situation for either the P.A. or the population at large," says Dore Gold, foreign policy adviser to Sharon. "But if the security personnel who receive salaries from the P.A. are regularly involved in sniper attacks on Israeli civilians, it creates a very difficult situation."
Israeli officials do not deny the complexity of the situation.
"We distinguish between the people in the Palestinian Authority - who are suffering - and the Palestinian Authority itself," said an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The economic situation in the P.A. is not good, but we are not looking at the collapse of the P.A. as a system."
According to the official, there are signs of "serious erosion" in the Palestinian Authority, although talk of institutional collapse is "exaggerated," and Arafat is still paying his civil servants.
"We have no interest in the P.A. collapsing," the official says. "We also intend to transfer the taxes. There is no decision in principle to hold this money, and it is not in Israel's interest to withhold the taxes since it is not our money."
For their part, European foreign ministers promised to provide $55 million to the Palestinian Authority, but called on the Authority to root out corruption and meet accepted accounting standards. The ministers, meeting under the auspices of the European Union, also agreed to hold an international donors conference March 7 to raise money for the Palestinians.
The issue of tax receipts is among the most problematic. Under economic accords that accompanied the peace process, Israel collects customs, value-added taxes and purchase taxes on goods imported to the Palestinian Authority through Israeli ports and airports.
Each month, Israeli finance officials calculate how much Israel has collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
The Israelis then sit with Palestinian officials and offset the figure with various sums the Palestinian Authority owes Israel, primarily for utility service. Last year, Israel transferred roughly $50 million a month to the Palestinian Authority, even after the Palestinian violence began.
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