In some of its first acts since coming to power, Israel's new Security Cabinet approved a series of punitive steps against the Palestinian leadership, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Friday.
According to a statement from Netanyahu's office, the move is in retaliation for Palestinians pushing the U.N.'s highest judicial body to give its opinion on the Israeli occupation. The development underscores the hard-line approach to the Palestinians that Israel's new ultranationalist government has promised at a time of rising violence in the occupied territories.
It comes a week after the United Nations General Assembly voted to approve a resolution requesting that the International Court of Justice intervene and render an opinion on the legality of Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Israel's Security Cabinet described the Palestinian Authority's request to the U.N. As a “decision to wage political and legal war against the State of Israel.” "The current government will not sit idly by in the face of this war and will respond as necessary," it said.
In response, the Security Cabinet, packed with Netanyahu's far-right and religiously conservative allies, decided Israel would withhold $39 million from the Palestinian Authority and transfer the funds instead to a compensation program for the families of Israeli victims of Palestinian militant attacks.