RAMALLAH, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged French President Emmanuel Macron to review the Paris Protocol on economic ties signed between Israel and the Palestinians in 1994, a senior official said on Thursday.
Prime Minister of the Palestinian caretaker government Rami Hamdallah said in a press statement after he met with foreign donors in Ramallah that President Abbas asked President Macron in a letter to reconsider the Paris accord.
"The Palestinian request to France was made following the increase of the Israeli violations and breaches to the agreement," said Hamdlallah.
France was a major sponsor to the Israeli-Palestinian economic agreement, which was signed in Paris in 1994 aiming at organizing the economic ties between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
However, the agreement wasn't fully implemented due to deep differences between Israel and the Palestinians, where peace talks between the two sides had stopped in 2014 after the United States sponsored it for nine months.
Abbas addressed the letter to his French counterpart after Israel decided on Feb. 17 to cut 138 million U.S. dollars from the tax revenues that Israel collects from the Palestinian trade on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Abbas had earlier considered the Israeli decision as "the last nail in the coffin of Paris Protocol," referring to the collapse of the signed agreement between the two sides.
Israel said it decided to cut only the money from the tax revenues that the PA pays to the families of the Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinians that got killed in the conflict with Israel.
Meanwhile, Hamdallah called on the European Union to exert pressure on Israel to stop cutting the PA tax revenues and bring the money back into the Palestinian treasury.
