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EU tells PA to accept tax revenues from Israel and resume security ties
The European Union has said it won’t bail out the Palestinian Authority with additional aid for so long as it refuses to accept tax revenues collected by Israel, it has been reported.
President Mahmoud Abbas announced in May that the PA would stop accepting $150m a month in tax revenues which is collected on its behalf by Israel. The move was part of a wider severing of ties with Israel after Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to annex parts of the West Bank. Abbas’ actions triggered a financial crisis, with the PA unable to pay the salaries of public service workers.
But the EU, reported the Axios website, is refusing requests from the PA for new loans and financial assistance. It says that Abbas should accept the $750m in tax revenues now being held by Israel’s Finance Ministry following Netanyahu’s decision in August to abandon annexation.
In a call earlier this month, the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell urged Abbas to start accepting the revenues and resume security and civilian coordination with Israel. That message, Israeli officials told the news site, had also been delivered to Abbas by Jordan and Egypt.
Abbas, however, was noncommittal on the call with Borrell. The unprecedented EU ultimatum, writes Axios’ Barak Ravid, “is another indication that frustration with leaders in Ramallah is growing, even among staunch supporters of the Palestinians”.
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Lebanon and Israel aim to tackle maritime dispute in first talks in 30 years
Officials representing Israel and Lebanon sat down for their first talks in three decades this week.
The discussions, hosted by the United Nations and mediated by the US, took place close to the border between Israel and Lebanon. Although sat in the same room, the Lebanese have insisted they will not speak directly to the Israelis. The two counties, which have no diplomatic relations, have not engaged in negotiations for more than 30 years.
While hailed as “historic” by US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, the talks are focused solely on a dispute concerning the exact delineation of each other’s territorial waters in an area that may contain undersea natural gas reserves. US officials say talks between Israel and Lebanon on the land border will be held on a “separate track”.
Both sides have downplayed the likely results of the negotiations. “We’re not talking about peace talks or negotiations over normalisation,” said Israeli energy minister, Yuval Steinitz, “but rather about the attempt to solve a technical-economic problem that for a decade has been preventing us from developing natural resources in the sea for the benefit of the people of the region.”
Hezbollah, which exercises huge political and military influence in Lebanon, insisted the talks have “absolutely nothing to do with ‘reconciling’ with the rapacious Zionist enemy.”
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MEPs urge EU to get tough with PA on controversial curriculum
More than 20 members of the European parliament from 15 nations have urged the European Union to partially withhold funding from the PA until Ramallah makes sweeping changes to its controversial school curriculum. The new curriculum, introduced in 2017, incites violence, glorifies terrorism and contains antisemitic content. The UK government has admitted its aid funds the teaching and implementation of the curriculum.
“These textbooks are drafted and taught by education sector civil servants and teachers whose salaries are financed through the EU’s PEGASE instrument,” the cross-party group of MEPs wrote in a letter to the European Commission. “They violate each of the UNESCO standards for peace, tolerance and co-existence in school education.”
British ministers were alerted to the issue by LFI in 2017. Under pressure, they promised to back an international review of the textbooks, which was due to report last autumn. But questions have now been raised about the review, which is being undertaken by the Georg Eckert Institute, after it was discovered it had mistakenly included – and praised – Israeli Jerusalem municipality textbooks.
“The Palestinian Authority has ignored all efforts to get them to change their extremist curriculum,” Marcus Sheff, chief executive of IMPACT-se, said. Read full article
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Our friends at We Believe in Israel have a new BDS explainer
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