Israel and the US determined to withhold any funding to the Palestinian Authority

Brussels, 5 March - Speaking at a meeting of Foreign Ministers of EU, some of whom expressed their desire to resume financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, Israeli Foreign Mnister Tzipi Livni urged the European Union to maintain the US-Israeli boycott of the Palestinian National Authority. Livni asserted that upkeeping the boycott was in the interest of whom she called the moderates among the Palestinian leadership, meaning the security forces organized under Fatah leaders, to whom the Israeli government recently handed over 100 million dollars, taken from the Palestinian tax and customs revenues it is withholding.

Meanwhile, the US daily Los Angeles Times reported that American and Israeli lawyers are preparing to sue the Jordan-based Arab Bank for allegedly transferring funds to groups and organizations, but also to individuals who have been defined "terrorists" by the US. The alleged terrorist organizations would include the Palestinian movements of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The individuals who would be included in the terrorist label are relatives of victims of Israeli military operations or people, including women and children, who died resisting the Israeli occupation or because of the occupation.

The Arab Bank had already been threatened by the US administration in 2005 and had agreed to pay 24 million dollars to avoid having its oversea's assets frozen. Regarding the latest move, The Los Angeles Times quotes Robert Chlopak, US-based spokesman of the bank, as saying that "the Arab Bank had reason to believe these were humanitarian payments or social welfare payments" from rich Arab donors or charities to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories "and there was certainly nothing in any of the public information that suggested to the bank at the time that these were in any way meant to induce terrorism or reward terrorism". 

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