From Caroline Glick over at BigPeace.com:
Two weeks ago, a Palestinian from Bethlehem was arrested by the US-financed and trained Palestinian Authority security forces. He was charged with “carrying out commercial transactions with residents of a hostile state.”
No, he was not buying uranium from Iran. His purported crime was purchasing wood products from an Israeli community located beyond the 1949 armistice lines.
Denied bail by the US-funded PA magistrate’s court in Bethlehem, he has been remanded to custody pending the conclusion of his trial.
This man’s arrest is part of what the unelected, US-supported Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has touted as his “National Honor Fund.” The goal of this project is to ban all economic contact between Palestinians and Jews who live and work beyond the 1949 armistice lines. As far as the supposedly moderate Fayyad is concerned, those Jews and Israel generally comprise the “hostile state,” that the Palestinians under Fayyad’s leadership are being compelled to boycott.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Palestinian Labor Minister Ahmed Majdalani said the PA hopes that by the end of the year all the thousands of Palestinians who are employed in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria will quit their jobs. What he didn’t mention is that if they don’t quit, they will be arrested.
According to PA Economics Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh, since the start of Fayyad’s campaign, the PA has confiscated $1 million worth of Israeli products including foods, cosmetics and hardware from Palestinian stores.
Fayyad’s measures come on top of previously enacted PA measures like imposing the death penalty on Palestinians who sell land to Jews. Less than two months ago, the PA reaffirmed that it will continue to execute any Palestinian who commits this “crime.”
Creeping Sharia takes note of the most recent “wealth transfer” from American taxpayers to the Palestinians:
Another $150 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars, courtesy of Hillary Clinton and Obama to the corrupt and flourishing settlement of ‘Palestine’.
Watch the C-Span video [below], to see Hillary Clinton first blast Israel for building homes on its own land prior to announcing the latest donation to the unaccountable and corrupt ‘Palestinian’ Authority.
[….]
“…the United States has transferred an additional $150 million dollars in direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority. This brings our direct budget assistance to a total of $225 million dollars for the year, and our overall support and investment to nearly $600 million dollars this year. This figure underscores the strong determination of the American people and this administration to stand with our ‘Palestinian’ friends even in difficult economic times as we have here at home.”