Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, convened his inner cabinet yesterday to study proposals to sanction the Palestinian leadership after it won overwhelming international support on Monday for its bid to join UNESCO.
While some kind of punitive action was expected, the severity of Israel’s response suggested that Mr Netanyahu had bowed to pressure from right-wing ministers intent on exacting the heaviest penalty possible for what they saw as an act of Palestinian effrontery.
An Israeli government official defended the measures, saying that Mr Netanyahu had been left with no choice but to respond robustly to Palestinian “unilateralism” in its pursuit of UN membership and by what he claimed was the growing radicalism of Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.
“You cannot demand that Israel continues to show restraint when the Palestinian leadership continues to slam the door in our face,” he said.
By withholding Palestinian customs revenues, Mr Netanyahu has taken a step that his defence establishment has countenanced against for fear that it could cause the collapse of the moderate Palestinian Authority.
The PA relies heavily on the revenues to meet its budget expenditure and some observers have questioned whether it can survive without them. Israeli generals say the PA has played a vital role in reining in terrorism and that its collapse could jeopardise the years of comparative calm Israel has enjoyed since 2005.
Mr Netanyahu also announced plans to expedite the construction of 2,000 settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Any expansion would represent a further blow to the already remote hopes of reviving Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and last night a spokesman for Mr Abbas called the move “a decision to speed up the destruction of the peace process”.
The Palestinian Authority has demanded a total settlement freeze as a condition for returning to talks, arguing that Israel has used previous negotiations as cover to accelerate Jewish construction in the West Bank, thereby undermining the viability of a future Palestinian state.
Mr Netanyahu’s decision could also set Israel on a collision course with the Obama administration, which has abandoned its policy of criticising settlement construction in the face of domestic opposition, but still sees the subject as an extremely sensitive one.
The Israeli prime minister, however, appears to be banking on the belief that the US president will be too reluctant to antagonise his Republican detractors by castigating his government.
So far US and Israeli policy has moved in tandem in response to Unesco’s decision to admit the Palestinian Authority, which was backed by 10 EU members, including France. Washington announced on Monday that it would suspend its funding of Unesco, depriving the body of nearly £50 million – 22 per cent of its budget.
Israel and the United States have both argued that the PA’s admission undermines the peace process by encouraging the Palestinians to believe they can be rewarded without having to come to the negotiating table.
The PA has announced its intention to seek membership of a number of UN bodies. At the same time, its most controversial initiative – an application to be recognised as a sovereign and independent state – has been submitted to the Security Council, although Washington has announced it will wield its veto to prevent the move.
Amid the recriminations, the Palestinian Authority reported that telephone and internet services across the West Bank and Gaza were badly disrupted yesterday after a sustained attack by computer hackers.
Officials claimed that the “distributed denial-of-service” attack was so sophisticated it can only have been organised by a foreign state, but they stopped short of blaming Israel and said they did not know if it was connected to their bid to join Unesco.