Israel's Gov't Votes to Halt Financial Payments to Palestinian Authority Because It Pays Salaries to Terrorists
Israel’s security cabinet voted on Sunday to withhold 600 million shekels ($176 million) from the Palestinian Authority over the next year to counter the money the PA pays to terrorists and their families.
Dubbed “pay-to-slay,” the PA policy of paying salaries to terrorists and their families for attacking Israelis is considered to incentivize Palestinians to carry out terror attacks.
The monies will be withheld from taxes collected by Israel on behalf of the PA, mostly from Palestinians who work inside Israel.
Israel passed a law in 2018 requiring the government to withhold the same amount of money from the PA as was estimated they would pay to terrorists and their families. But it must be reapproved by the security cabinet from time to time, The Times of Israel said.
Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, called the Israeli vote a “financial blockade” and termed it stealing Palestinian money “in a step that adds to the daily escalation in our cities, villages and camps and the legalization of our bloodshed,” TOI reported.
The vote came on the 20th anniversary of a significant terror attack. On July 31, 2002, terrorists murdered nine people, including five American students, and injured more than 80 others in a bombing attack at the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria on the Hebrew University campus in Jerusalem.
And now as a matter of policy, the PA is giving raises to the terrorists who perpetrated the deadly Jerusalem attack.
Four Palestinians from an eastern Jerusalem Hamas cell were arrested shortly after the attack in August 2002 and four more were arrested over the next four years. The Hebrew University attack was one of a number that the same cell carried out.
According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an Israeli research institute, terrorist salaries increase according to their time served.
So, four of the terrorists are now receiving a raise from 7,000 ($2,251) to 8,000 ($2,572) shekels a month. They also receive supplements to those payments based on whether or not they are married, how many children they have, and for being Jerusalem residents.
“In other words, as a reward for their participation in terror and as a reward for murdering tens of people, the PA has paid these 8 terrorists a cumulative sum of 8,022,600 shekels ($2,579,614),” wrote Maurice Hirsch, Director of Legal Strategies at PMW in his report.
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