The Palestinian Authority (PA) on Monday rejected moves made by Israel to prevent the collapse of the West Bank’s governing body, accusing the Israeli coalition of “blackmail.”
Israel’s security cabinet on Sunday voted to adopt a proposed resolution that would see Israel work to prevent the collapse of the PA. The proposal also calls for the PA to cease its activities against Israel in the international legal-diplomatic arena, end incitement, and stop payments to families of terrorists.
In response, PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh vowed to continue the diplomatic efforts against Israel in the international arena and rejected the demand to stop payments to “martyrs” or imprisoned terrorists.
“On behalf of the Palestinian government, we say that what is required of Israel is to halt its aggression on our people, killings, settlements, and the piracy of our money,” Shtayyeh said at a weekly meeting of the PA cabinet in Ramallah.
“The talk about conditioning the return of our money on halting our measures in international forums won’t happen,” he continued, adding that payments to the families of the “martyrs” and the security prisoners will carry on.
“Our people know these facts very well and they reject this blackmail.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also rejected the Israeli demands and accused Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his “extremist right-wing coalition” of lying and spreading disinformation.
The PA has struggled to maintain its authority in parts of the northern West Bank. Palestinian terrorist groups have taken advantage of the vacuum left behind by the PA, with Iranian-backed militias using cities such as Jenin as bases to plan and carry out terror attacks against Israelis in the West Bank and across Israel. –i24 News
If the PA collapses internally then Oslo is gone.
That would leave the only two options as either allowing some more radical group to take control or for israel to try and govern over the Palestinians. Both are bad ideas.
The PA kind of has the Israeli government over a barrel