The Palestinian Authority continues to operate on the back of Israeli consumers, whose rates for electricity constantly rise while PA Arabs simply don’t pay to the extent that their debt to the Israel Electric Corp. now stands at $750 million.
In the past, Israel simply used Value Added Tax revenues, collected for the Palestinian Authority, to pay off the debt.
That no longer is feasible diplomatically because it would punch another hole in the Obama administration’s cherished peace talks.
Globes business newspaper noted that the Palestinian Authority could reach energy self-sufficiency if it were to take advantage of off-shore natural gas fields, which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ha offered to help develop for the regime.
“Information indirectly obtained by the media indicate that the Palestinians are largely responsible for the problem,” the left-leaning Globes wrote this week. “Their conduct, according to this partial information, has been amateurish, if not actually childish, and is mostly defamatory and slanderous.