JERUSALEM: The Israeli military has warned the government its policy of cutting off funds to the Palestinian Authority could push the occupied West Bank into a third “intifada,” public broadcaster Kan Radio reported on Thursday.
The warning, as the war in Gaza approaches the start of its ninth month, underlined the increasingly dire state of the West Bank economy where hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs in Israel and public servants have been unpaid or on partial pay for months.
The West Bank, home to 2.8 million Palestinians and 670,000 Israeli settlers, is under Israeli military occupation with the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority exercising limited self rule.
Israel has blocked Palestinian workers from entering from the West Bank since the Hamas militant group that controls the Gaza Strip attacked Israeli territory on Oct. 7 precipitating the war in Gaza.
According to estimates from the Palestinian finance ministry, Israel has been holding back a total of around 6 billion shekels ($1.61 billion) in tax revenues, adding to a broad financial squeeze that has resulted in growing hardship as donor funds have dried up.
Nasr Abdul Karim, an economist from the Arab American University in Ramallah, said the Palestinian Authority had been able to make up some of the shortfall by taking out private loans, but that was unlikely to be possible in the long term.
“This month that was an option, will it be an option next month, or the one after?” he said.
Even before the Gaza war, rising violence had drawn fears of a third intifada, the name given to the uprisings that shook Israel and the West Bank in the 1980s and early 2000s.
The tensions caused by the financial clampdown risked turning the West Bank from a secondary theater in the war into a core theater, Kan Radio quoted a memorandum from the military as saying.
The army has become increasingly alarmed as economic hardship has fed into violence that has surged across the West Bank, with hundreds of Palestinians, including armed fighters as well as stone-throwing youths and uninvolved civilians, killed in clashes with security forces.
Violent raids on Palestinian villages by groups of Israeli settlers have become commonplace, and more than a dozen Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Asked about the report, the military referred Reuters to the Shin Bet security service, which declined to comment. A Defense Ministry spokesperson said she had no knowledge of the document. But an Israeli official who requested anonymity confirmed the existence of the memorandum, saying it was circulated among various government ministries, military and security agencies “more than a week ago.”
The Palestinian Authority, the body set up three decades ago under the Oslo interim peace accords, has been engaged in a bitter standoff for months with Israel’s hard-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has refused to release tax revenues, accusing the PA of supporting Israel’s enemy Hamas.
Badeea Al-Dwaik, an employee at the Ministry of Labour, said public sector workers were already receiving no more than 70-80 percent of their pay even before the Oct. 7 attacks.
“After Oct 7, they started giving us 50 percent,” he said. “It is hard to make ends meet with such a salary, there are a lot of employees who have debts.”
Kan Radio cited the memorandum, prepared by officials from the military and Shin Bet, as saying the squeeze on incomes was likely to push many Palestinians toward armed militant groups backed by cash from Iran.
It recommended a series of measures, including opening up more crossing points between Israel and the West Bank to allow Palestinian citizens of Israel easier weekend access to go shopping, and testing supervised entry to Israel for a limited number of Palestinian laborers.
Palestinian Government spokesperson Mohammad Abu Al-Rub said tax revenue which Israel has withheld from the Palestinian Authority accounted for 70 percent of general budget revenues, describing it as part of a general campaign against Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza.
“There is a heavy financial siege that Israel is imposing on the Palestinians and its leadership, just as is the case with the war on Gaza,” he said.
Israeli military alarmed by standoff over West Bank funds, report says
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Israeli military alarmed by standoff over West Bank funds, report says
- Israel has been holding back a total of around $1.61 billion in tax revenues
- Even before the Gaza war, rising violence had drawn fears of a third intifada
Israel strikes Yemen’s Sana’a airport, ports and power stations
- Houthis said that multiple air raids targeted an airport, military air base and a power station in Yemen
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said it struck multiple targets linked to the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen on Thursday, including Sana’a International Airport and three ports along the western coast.
Attacks hit Yemen’s Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations as well as military infrastructure in the ports of Hodeidah, Salif and Ras Kanatib, Israel’s military added.
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel in what they describe as acts of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The Israeli attacks on the airport, Hodeidah and on one power station, were reported by Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Houthis.
More than a year of Houthi attacks have disrupted international shipping routes, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys that have in turn stoked fears over global inflation.
Israel has instructed its diplomatic missions in Europe to try to get the Houthis designated as a terrorist organization.
The UN Security Council is due to meet on Monday over Houthi attacks against Israel, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said on Wednesday.
On Saturday, Israel’s military failed to intercept a missile from Yemen that fell in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, injuring 14 people.
Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years, with oil-rich Saudi Arabia a major destination.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new Islamist rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.
Since an Islamist-led rebel alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
A Saudi delegation met Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, a source close to the government told AFP, to discuss the “Syria situation and captagon.”
Jordan in recent years has also cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.
Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
AMMAN: About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that “around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country between the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024 until Thursday.”
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.
Lebanon hopes for neighborly relations in first message to new Syria government
- Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war
- Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders
DUBAI: Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighborly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, in a phone call, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said on X.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel – a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines.
Under Assad, Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist militants captured the capital Damascus.
Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders after toppling Assad.
Iraqi intelligence chief discusses border security with new Syrian administration
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi delegation met with Syria’s new rulers in Damascus on Thursday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, the latest diplomatic outreach more than two weeks after the fall of Bashar Assad’s rule.
The delegation, led by Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid Al-Shatri, “met with the new Syrian administration,” government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi told state media, adding that the parties discussed “the developments in the Syrian arena, and security and stability needs on the two countries’ shared border.”
