Benjamin Netanyahu still has no clear plan for the "day after" in Gaza. It is also obvious that he has every interest in prolonging hostilities as long as possible, with the prospect of the November re-election of Donald Trump, who has supported him unconditionally during his four years in the White House. But the Israeli Prime Minister also knows that prolonging the conflict protects him both from the triple legal proceedings against him (for corruption, fraud and breach of trust) and from the commission of inquiry that will be imposed on the collapse of Israel's security on October 7, 2023.
Netanyahu is also opposed to the return of Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority (PA) to Gaza, while assigning Israel the illusory goal of a "total victory" against Hamas. The head of the Israeli government refuses to reopen the bridges between the West Bank and Gaza, for fear of encouraging the emergence, even in the long term, of a Palestinian state. And too bad if the PA maintains a "security cooperation" from which Israel derives the greatest benefit in its fight against Palestinian Islamists.
Israel's military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, which has already claimed more than 38,000 lives in nine months, has been accompanied by intensified repression in the occupied West Bank, where almost 600 Palestinians have been killed in the same period. But the intensity of this violence, in which settlers play a decisive role, with the active or passive complicity of the Israeli army, is compounded by intense financial pressure on the PA.
The pressure exerted by Netanyahu himself is heightened by his decision to entrust the finance portfolio to supremacist Bezalel Smotrich, who makes no secret of his desire to completely colonize the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And paradoxically, it was in the peace agreements signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993-1995 that Netanyahu and Smotrich found the weapon to bring the PA to its financial knees.
The "Oslo Accords," as they are commonly known, established the "Palestinian Authority," the fruit of an agreement between Israel and the PLO, with which it came to be identified. The PA's funding rules were defined by the "Paris Protocol," signed in 1994 between the Israeli Finance Minister and the PLO's development officer.
These rules provide for the automatic transfer from Israel to the PA of all taxes due to it, even if they are collected in Israel (VAT on Palestinian imports, fuel taxes, or taxes on Palestinian workers in Israel), within the framework of an Israeli-Palestinian customs union. This arrangement highlights, if proof were needed, the PA's lack of sovereignty over the territories, which it merely administers, with powers and resources delegated by Israel.
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