Hamas-led Palestinian government demands Israel to return withheld fund

The Palestinian government led by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has sent a letter to Israel demanding for returning the tax and customs revenues that withheld by Israel, the Jerusalem Post newspaper reported Friday.

According to the report, the one-page letter was written in English and formally addressed to Israeli Finance Minister Avraham Hirchson at his office in Jerusalem.

The letter said that the Palestinian side needs the money to meet the payroll for its approximately 160,000 civil servants, whom it has generally been unable to pay since the international community froze funding after Hamas came to power.

It also accused Israel of unlawful behavior and specified the agreements under which, it asserted, Israel was obligated to transfer the funds, including the Paris protocol on economic relations of April 1994, which formed part of the Oslo accords.

Israeli Finance Ministry, however, has no intention to respond to the letter, said the report.

The Israeli government, which considers Hamas a terrorist group, has stopped transferring the revenues to the Palestinian side since Hamas won the January Palestinian legislative elections.

After Hamas came to power, it had vowed to keep its police to

commit itself to Israel's destruction and refused to renounce violence and honor previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements.

Due to the West cutoff of crucial aid and Israel's withholding of tax money, the Hamas-led government has been facing a deepening financial crisis.

Source: Xinhua