Palestinian Authority to resume cooperation with Israel
A senior Palestinian official said Tuesday that the Israeli-Palestinian relationship will "return to how it was."
The Palestinian Authority (PA) announced on Tuesday that it would restore ties with Israel, renewing civil and security cooperation after a six-month-long standoff that kept millions in tax revenues from reaching cash-strapped Palestinians in the West Bank.
Hussein al-Sheikh, the PA’s civil affairs minister, tweeted on Tuesday that “the relationship with Israel will return to how it was” and that the Palestinians had received written and verbal pledges from Israel to stick to previous agreements.
In May, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ended civil and security cooperation with Israel over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned annexation of large portions of the West Bank, an area that the Palestinians envision as part of their future independent state. Those plans are now on hold as part of Israel’s normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
In addition to cutting security cooperation, the PA said it would no longer accept the taxes collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinians, which constitute roughly 60% of the PA’s overall revenue. Without the payments, the Palestinian leadership has struggled to pay the salaries of tens of thousands of civil servants.
