Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused the Zionist entity of "gangsterism" on Wednesday over its decision to withhold the transfer of more than $100 million a month.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused the Zionist entity of "gangsterism" on Wednesday over its decision to withhold the transfer of more than $100 million a month in tax revenues it collects on the Palestinians' behalf.

Opening a two-day meeting of senior Palestinian officials, when overall ties with the entity and the possibility of suspending security coordination with the Zionists will be discussed, Abbas described the tax move as a provocation.

"How are they allowed to take away our money? Are we dealing with a state or with a gangster?" he asked a gathering of the Palestine Liberation Organization's central council, its second-highest decision-making body.

The Zionist authorities announced in January it was halting transfers, saying it was in retaliation for a Palestinian decision to sign up to the International Criminal Court, where it plans to pursue war crimes charges against Israel.

It is not the first time the payments, covering around two-thirds of the Palestinian budget, have been suspended, but in the past it has usually lasted only a few weeks. This time, the policy is unlikely to change until well after the Zionist elections in March, once a new government is in place.

Already many of the PA's 140,000 civil servants have had their pay cut by around 40 percent and there have been bouts of unrest in Ramallah, Bethlehem and other West Bank cities.

Security coordination with the occupation entity, a critical agreement dating back to the Oslo peace accords of the mid-1990s, may end up suspended simply because police and other personnel cannot be paid, Palestinian officials have said.

"How are we going to pay the salaries?" asked Abbas, adding that as well as the tax revenues, the entity owed 1.8 billion shekels ($450 million) in unpaid salaries to Palestinians working for businesses in the occupied territories.

Earlier this week, the occupation military mobilized 13,000 troops in the West Bank in a surprise drill, a reflection of the rising security concerns.