PA Halts Payment to Israel Electric Corporation

The Palestinian Authority halted the transfer of payments to the Israeli Electric Corporation, which supplies electricity to the municipalities in their areas, reported Kan news on Tuesday. In the past three months, the Palestinian Authority’s debt to the IEC has grown by another NIS 300 million, and is now about NIS 2 billion.

The PA instructed the municipal authorities in its territory not to pay the electricity bills to Israel and to keep the money in their hands, as compensation for the budgetary assistance that was supposed to be received from the central government in Ramallah – and was frozen in recent months. The aid was frozen after the Palestinian Authority found itself in a budgetary pit because of its refusal to receive tax revenues from Israel, from which the salaries of families of prisoners and suicide terrorists were deducted.