JERUSALEM - Israel is delaying the transfer of taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinians in retaliation for their application to join the International Criminal Court, a newspaper reported Saturday.
Haaretz daily, citing an unidentified Israeli official, said the move involves $127 million (106 million euros) in VAT and customs duties on goods for the Palestinian territories that pass through Israel.
The funds for the month of December were due to pass on Friday, but it was decided to half the transfer as part of the response to the Palestinian move, the official told Haaretz.
The punitive measure is in response to Friday's Palestinian application to join the ICC and press war crimes charges against Israel there, said the official.
Israeli army radio and other local media also reported the story, but there was no immediate response to AFP's request for official confirmation.
Israel has delayed payments to the Palestinians to signal its displeasure in the past, including in 2012 after the Palestinians won a November 29 UN vote recognising Palestine as a non-member state.
It did it again in May 2011 after Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas announced a reconciliation deal with Hamas aimed at ending years of enmity between the Islamist militant group and his Fatah movement, and in November 2011, after the Palestinians won admission to UNESCO.
The tax revenues make up two thirds of the Palestinian Authority's annual budget, excluding foreign aid.
Earlier on Saturday sources close to an Israeli government official told AFP that Israel is considering filing war crimes suits overseas against Palestinian leaders in response to their ICC application.
- Israeli judicial offensive -
Legal proceedings at courts in the United States and elsewhere are being weighed against Abbas, his Palestinian Authority and other senior officials, the sources said in a statement.
It said that the basis of the complaints would be that Abbas's partnership in a Palestinian consensus government with Hamas makes him complicit in the militant Islamist group's rocket attacks from Gaza against civilians inside Israel.
In recent days officials in Israel stressed that those who should be wary of legal proceedings are the heads of the PA who cooperate within the unity government with Hamas, a declared terrorist organisation which like the Islamic State (jihadist group) carries out war crimes -- it fires at civilians from within population centres, it said.
The sources, who declined to be named, did not detail precisely where or when such proceedings could be launched.
The Palestinians' ICC bid is firmly opposed by Israel and the United States.
It is part of a shift in strategy for the Palestinians, who are seeking to internationalise their campaign for statehood and move away from the stalled US-led negotiation process.
The US has branded the move to seek ICC membership counterproductive and warned it would only push the sides further apart.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to review the so-called instruments of accession and notify state members on the request within 60 days.
The Palestinian national consensus government took office in June this year, following the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah movement, ending seven years of rival administrations in the West Bank and Gaza.
Hamas remains the de facto power in the Gaza Strip and fought a bitter summer war with Israel, which took the lives of 73 people on the Israeli side and of nearly 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians.
According to Israeli government figures, Hamas fired 4,562 rockets during the fighting in July and August, reaching as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
AFP
