The Diplomatic-Security Cabinet was slated on Sunday to approve the deduction of an amount equal to the hundreds of millions of shekels the Palestinian Authority pays to terrorists and their families from the tax funds Israel collects on behalf of the PA.
Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed for the first time to enact the "terrorist salaries law," which allows the government to deduct the amount the Palestinian Authority pays to terrorists and their families from the taxes Israel collects on the PA's behalf.
The law also requires the Defense Ministry to provide the cabinet with data on the amount the PA pays terrorists and their families. The Finance Ministry will then withhold that amount from the tax funds.
Netanyahu's announcement came after the Shin Bet security agency said Sunday that the brutal slaying of 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher by a Palestinian near Jerusalem last week was a terrorist attack.
The prime minister's office declined to disclose the total amount Israel would be withholding from the PA tax money.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said that the government would be "taking a major step, whose purpose is to make it clear to the PA that its insistence on encouraging and incentivizing terrorism against the citizens of Israel carries a price."
"Since 2004, the PA has paid fat salaries to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and compensates the families of terrorists who have been killed. In 2018, the PA allocated 1.27 billion shekels [about $350 million, 7% of its budget] for that purpose, and actually spent even more than that," Kuperwasser added.
