Stores under Palestinian Authority control have officially begun boycotting Israeli products this week.

Among the Israeli companies that PA supervised stores will boycott are Tnuva, Strauss, Elite, Osem, Prigat and Yafora.

Previous calls to boycott Israeli products didn’t fare too well, as Arabs are loathe to give up on Israeli quality food products that they want or need.

This time around, the Palestinian Authority plans to destroy any remaining Israeli products found in PA supervised stores by next week – which means they’ll be sending around their Fatah enforcers to make sure that stores are complying with the decree, whether they want to or not.

The PA says the boycott is in response to Israel withholding the transfer of tax funds, which Israel decided to do after the PA took unilateral anti-Israel steps at the International Criminal Court and the UN Security Council.

Without the tax money, the PA can’t pay their 150,000 civil servants, security personnel and captured terrorists sitting in Israeli jails.

The Rami Levi supermarket chain, which is very popular among Arabs from the Palestinian Authority, may very well pick up a lot of new business as a result of the Palestinian Authority’s actions.

Rami Levy, known for its inexpensive prices, has stores in central locations throughout Judea and Samaria, and one can always see Settlers and Arabs working and shopping together side by side within the stores.

70% of processed foods sold in the PA come from Israel, though those sales make up less than 3% of the market for the Israeli companies.

The Palestinian Authority also doesn’t actually have anywhere near the production capacity to supply enough milk and dairy products to their population without the Israeli company Tnuva supplying their needs.

Despite PA threats, Arabs under PA control haven’t given up their lucrative jobs working for Jews, who pay them two to three time more than jobs they can get within the PA, and the Arabs are not about to stop giving their children milk to drink.

And those same Arabs aren’t about to give up their Israeli Bamba either.

All the PA has done is shoot themselves in the foot… again.

The Israel Defense Forces held a surprise military drill this weekend in Judea, Samaria and all territories won by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

The unannounced two-day exercise involved the mobilization of some 13,000 troops.

It was the first time in three years such a drill has been held.

The drill, held by Central Command, was intended to “test the army’s level of readiness,” according to IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot.

Although the exercise was held on the same day the Palestinian Authority threatened to dissolve its security cooperation with Israel, an army spokesperson said the timing was “not necessarily linked to anything specific.”

Last month Israel stopped transferring tax funds it collects on behalf of the PA, after the entity violated the Oslo Accords and unilaterally declared itself an independent sovereign nation and joined world bodies, including the International Criminal Court at The Hague. In response, Israel began to apply the monies to the massive debt owed by the PA to the Israel Electric Company.

The PA followed up by threatening to halt security cooperation as well as other relations with Israel.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned PA  chairman Mahmoud Abbas in a phone call last week not to halt security coordination with Israel, Arab media reported.

State Dept. spokesperson Jen Psaki told journalists in a briefing Friday that Kerry and Abbas “discussed current dynamics between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and the importance of ensuring the financial viability of the Palestinian Authority.”

When reporters tried to pin her down on specifics, Psaki did not deny the report, offering more words without a straight answer.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly warned Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas in a phone call not to suspend security cooperation with Israel, according to Arab media.

Kerry’s spokeswoman Jen Psaki did not deny the report and sidestepped confirming it.

In Friday’s daily press briefing, she was asked specifically if “Kerry during his call warn President Abbas not to suspend security cooperation with Israel?”

Psaki said:

He [Kerry] spoke to President Abbas on Wednesday. They discussed current dynamics between the Palestinian Authority and Israel and the importance of ensuring the financial viability of the Palestinian Authority. The Secretary also detailed his efforts with key stakeholders to prevent a crisis in the West Bank and the way ahead in the coming months.

PA media headlined reported, “Mr. Kerry threatening Abbas of U.S. sanctions if he even dared to stop the security cooperation with Israel.”

So did he or didn’t he?

Psaki did not deny it and simply said, “I just addressed the question of what they discussed, and I think that certainly isn’t consistent with what I just outlined in terms of their call.

That is ‘spokesmen’s talk” for “yes, he did threaten Abbas but I won’t say that.”

The idea that Kerry and Obama are against Israel is only half-true. They also are against the Palestinian Authority. They are against anyone who does not cooperate with Obama’s attempts to fulfill the expectations of the Nobel Prize establishment, which bestowed the president with the Nobel Peace Prize before he had a chance to show he does not deserve it.

IDF training and resources in 2015 will be concentrating on strengthening two primary threat assessment areas, protecting Israel’s external borders and tunnel fighting.

The army believes that Israel’s biggest threats will be emanating from across the borders where the various radical Islamic terror groups have taken over, or will be taking over. The IDF will be allocating three times the amount of reserve unit resources to concentrate on protecting Israel’s borders.

The tunnel related training will revolve around underground fighting, as well as destroying the tunnels and the terrorists inside, from above without entering the tunnel.

A new training ground will be built with an underground tunnel systems for the purpose of training the IDF troops, and in particular elite units who will specialize in tunnel fighting.

The IDF also expects a new round of violence in Judea and Samaria this year as the Palestinian Authority’s budgetary problems escalate.

The Palestinian Authority has announced it will appeal this week’s New York federal court jury decision to pay $218 million in damages to American victims of Arab terrorist attacks in Israel.

The Anti-Terrorism Act allows for the actual amount of damages to reach $655.5 million, a sum that the PA says it cannot pay because it lacks funds. That is true because the Abbas regime needs the money to pay “salaries” to jailed terrorists who committed the murders for which the terror victims claimed damages.

Mahmoud Khalifa, PA deputy minister of Information, said that both the PLO and PA were “deeply disappointed” by the court decision.

He added:

We are confident that we will prevail, as we have faith in the US legal system and are certain about our common sense belief and our strong legal standing.

The decision is a tragic disservice to the millions of Palestinians who have invested in the democratic process and the rule of law in order to seek justice and redress their grievances, and to the international community which has invested so much in financial and political capital in a two-state solution in which the PLO and PNA are paramount.

The Palestinian Authority’s “democratic process” speaks for itself by the fact that Mahmoud Abbas now is in his 11th year of a five-year term that expired six years. He was elected in the first and perhaps last election in the Palestinian Authority.

Khalifa’s comment that the “international community…has invested so much in financial and political capital” underlines the real tragedy of the Palestinian Authority and the European Union. The PA is a welfare state. Without foreign donations, mainly from the Europeans, it could not afford to pay for its bloated government payroll, terrorists in jail, Abba’s worldwide junkets, and the propaganda machine that promotes a “no Israel state” solution and incites Arabs to murder Jews.

The European Union, which has a vested interest in “protecting its investment” and avoid exposure that it is pouring money down the drain, is desperate to see the PA achieve its aims.

But not to worry. Khalifa added, “We stand ready to be a partner in peace and an unyielding advocate for the rights of our people and homeland to exist as a free, independent, democratic and prosperous state, living in peace with our neighbors.”

Reaction overseas was a bit shocking by the lack of coverage of the landmark decision.

The New York Times headlined the story, but the major networks totally ignored it.

NewsBusters noted, “NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight and CBS Evening News instead devoted a segment to a study showing 80% of kids born with peanut allergies improve if exposed to peanuts at an early age, on Feb. 23, the day the court’s ruling was handed down.”

U.S. Consulate officials in Ramallah demanded that a visiting New York City official remove his kippa 10 feet from the entrance to the consulate, Brooklyn Councilman David Greenfield said.

He was visiting the American office in Ramallah on Sunday as part of a City Council delegation’s eight-day visit in Israel.

Greenfield implied he might have been able to understand there was a security problem if it were a matter of his standing in the middle of a Ramallah street with a kippa.

The last thing American security officials want is a religious Jew letting Muslims know he is around. Perhaps they might think he is plotting to blow up the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, or even worse, offering a peace compromise with the Palestinian Authority.

But the delegation of councilmembers was simply on a bus next to the consulate, Greenfield said.

Security officers “insisted that I not wear yarmulke when leaving US Ramallah office,” he said. When the officials agreed with the councilman that he was not endangering security, he refused the request.

Councilman Greenfield tweeted:

I’m still flabbergasted that a Jew cannot wear a yarmulke walking out of the US Consulate in Ramallah, Israel.

He told JPUpdate “We had an amazing trip to Israel. However, I was surprised that in the supposedly ‘moderate’ city of Ramallah, the unofficial capital of the Palestinian Authority, it’s unsafe for a Jew to wear a yarmulke

“After all, I wasn’t strolling through the streets. I was simply walking ten feet from the door of our bus to the entrance of the American Consulate’s office.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Monday night that the Palestinian Authority has not learned anything from yesterday’s U.S. federal’s ruling n favor of families of terror victims who filed a lawsuit against the PA for damages.

“Instead of drawing the requisite lesson, the Palestinian Authority is advancing steps that endanger regional stability such as the hypocritical application to the International Criminal Court even as it is allied with the Hamas terrorist organization,” the Prime Minister said.

He added, “We expect the responsible elements in the international community to continue to punish those who support terrorism just as the U.S. federal court has done and to back the countries that are fighting terrorism.

“Today as well we remember the families that lost their loved ones; our heart is with them and there is no justice that can console them.”