The defense establishment and Finance Ministry are operating a secret, extra-budgetary fund, through which money is transferred to the Palestinian Authority.The fund's existence was revealed in the state's answer to the Supreme Court in response to a petition filed by the Kohelet Policy Forum. State's attorney Yael Morag Yako-El wrote that Israel had committed to transferring the Palestinians a "loan" of NIS 100 million ($28.86 million). "The source of this amount is an extra-budgetary fund managed by the Civil Administration and Finance Ministry's Budgets Department," she wrote.Attorney Ariel Erlich, who submitted the petition on behalf of the Kohelet Policy Forum, said..."Theoretically, this is a gross violation of the law. After all, if the law stipulates what and how you are permitted to transfer to the PA, the state cannot create extra-budgetary funds to bypass this prohibition."He added: "This whole story reeks of a cover-up, breaking the law, and funding terror. We hope the court won't allow the Finance Ministry to continue obscuring and blowing smoke. The citizens of Israel need to know whether public funds are transferred to fund terror through the circumvention of the Knesset's laws."The Finance Ministry said in response that the "fund is sourced from payments pertaining to the use of lands, including quarries, along with media bodies as well. The sums that are deposited in the fund are earmarked for such matters. It should be noted we have answered questions posed by various Knesset members before, within the relevant contexts, about the loan."
It turns out that Palestinians are also suspicious of money they are receiving from Israel.
Hassan Asfour, editor of Amad, thinks that this is evidence of Palestinian Authority corruption:
The Hebrew report, if true, reveals that Palestinian Authority officials agreed to accept money in exchange for “special services,” and that the authority has become like some countries that receive money in exchange for non-national services, provided to serve the national enemy, and not what is announced about explicit relations.
While Israelis are worried that the funds will go towards terrorism, Asfour is concerned that the funds will not go towards terror. His fear is that Israel is outsourcing some functions to the PA, like security, that would not be in the Palestinian national interest. And to him, as with most Palestinians with zero-sum mentalities, anything that benefits Israel is by definition against the Palestinian national interest.
Who says Palestinians and Israelis cannot agree on something?
Any way you look at it, there should be no room for secret money transfers to the PA. The chances that the money will go towards terrorism are too high, and anything that is not transparent is almost invariably ripe for misuse. And, as Kohelet says, it is very possibly illegal.
Not only do we need to know what this money is used for, but also under which government this fund was started.
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