Palestinian authority's dues at Israel are about half billion dollar

A Palestinian official said that the Palestinian governments' dues of tax and customs revenues from Israel total more than half a billion dollars.

The general manager of the Palestinian Ministry of Finance in Gaza, Said Owaida, said Israeli side is hesitating to transfer these sums, which creates problems that "make us helpless towards the financial performance as required."

He said, "Israel is creating pretexts" to avoid making the payments to the Palestinian government, although the Palestinian government is passing through critical circumstances, referring to the existence of a financial shortage that is estimated at nearly $70 million.

He added that the Palestinian Ministry of Finance started to build a complete supervisory system for implementing the current year's budget in the ministries and all the governmental corporations.