The Palestinian Authority filed a complaint Tuesday against Israel with the United Nations.
PA envoy Riyad Mansour wrote in his letter that Israel “resumed the theft of Palestinian tax revenues in direct retaliation for the legitimate, peaceful steps taken by the Palestinian leadership in the pursuit of justice and for the purpose of protecting the Palestinian people.”
Mansour’s complaint referred to Israel’s decision to withhold tax revenues collected on behalf of the PA to pay the entity’s outstanding debt to the Israel Electric Corp. of NIS 1.7 billion.
That decision “constitutes a blatant act of theft and of collective punishment,” Mansour charged. He claimed the tax revenues comprise the funding base for PA governmental institutions.
He neglected to mention the huge allocation for the generous monthly salaries paid to convicted PA terrorists incarcerated in Israeli prisons. Nor did he mention the thousands of members of the Hamas terrorist organization who are on the civil service payroll in Gaza — also “funded” by the Ramallah government which is, of course, underwritten by the foreign aid donated by the “international community.”
On Sunday, IEC chief executive officer Eli Glickman warned Israeli security heads in a letter that power might be cut in territories receiving service through the PA and Jerusalem District Electric Co. (JEDC).
JEDC purchases electricity from the IEC, and then sells it to PA communities in Judea and Samaria.
IEC issued the warning over concerns that power cuts could result in threats to the security of Israeli citizens from the PA population.
The company is refusing to connect new PA customers in Judea and Samaria, and threatening to cut power to the PA as well.
“The debt imposes a heavy burden on the company’s cash flow,” Glickman explained in his letter. “In light of the aforementioned facts, the Electric Corporation, with me as its chief, worked and will work as much as it can to collect the debt under discussion in order to preserve its financial stability.
“We therefore have no other choice, and the Electric Corporation, as a supplier of an essential service that is committed to all of its customers, is obligated to begin working in the coming days to collect with the following methods: 1. limiting the power supply; 2. not connecting new customers in areas of the JDEC and the PA.”
Unless the government intervenes to take action, Glickman continued, the IEC will be forced to carry out its attempt to collect the debt as described.