The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee will discuss a proposal to pay off the debt owed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to the Israel Electric Company with money that Israel transfers to the PA.
A discussion on the matter will be held next Sunday.
According to MKs, the PA has been using money that Israel collects for duties and taxes on behalf of the Authority, to pay the salaries of terrorists. Families of terrorists in Israeli prisons receive the money, and in this way, said MKs Orit Struk (Jewish Home), Eliezer Mozes (UTJ), Nissim Ze'ev (SHas), Shimon Ohayon (Yisrael Beytenu), Pnina Tamano-Shata (Yesh Atid) and Miri Regev (Likud), Israel was indirectly supporting terror.
The MKs requested that the Committee discuss the matter, demanding that the government do “the minimum possible.” If international agreements require that Israel transfer money to the PA, legal contracts require that the PA pay its bills to the IEC, so the government is perfectly justified under all aspects of international law in deducting that money from the PA payments and transferring them to the IEC.
The PA owes the IEC at least NIS 1.4 billion ($360 million), and has not made payments to the Israel Electric Company in at least four years.