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Ottoman Palestine Israel

THE

INCREDIBLE

STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

Editors Note  The Guardian article shows that the Palestinian practice of giving ‘salaries’ to Palestinians in prison for having committed a terrorist act or as a martyr was known in 2013 as ‘social welfare’ payments.  In 2017 the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) was told that these payments were  $1 billion over the past four years.  High Palestinian unemployment has shown that this was one way of receiving a high salary and on release from prison being admired and found work or on death going to heaven and receiving benefits.

The money to pay for this comes primarily from Western Aid to the Palestinian government, In 2016 a survey was to be carried out by the British government to find out whether this was true.

In 2014 The UK government issued   ‘The UK's Development Work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories - International Development Committee Contents’  which showed that they knew of this practice and excused it on the grounds of ‘welfare payments’. They also discuss UNRWA and the valuable contribution they make.  See Reassessing UNRWA. For many years opinion has been that it should be abolished and its functions returned to the Arab state where it functions or UNHCR as appropriate. Opposition to this is led by the management of UNRWA, many of whom  will lose their jobs and local politicians who want to retain it for personal reasons.

PALESTINIANS PAID TERRORISTS $1B IN PAST 4 YEARS, KNESSET PANEL HEARS
Day after reports of Trump shouting at Abbas about incitement, former top official dismisses PA claims that it is making 'social welfare' payments, saying they are presented as 'salaries' in Palestinian budget documents
Times of Israel staff, 29 May 2017

The Palestinian Authority has paid out some NIS 4 billion — or $1.12 billion — over the past four years to terrorists and their families, a former director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and ex-head of the army’s intelligence and research division told a top Knesset panel on Monday.

Setting out the figures, Brig.-Gen (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the longer the period for which a Palestinian security prisoner is jailed, “the higher the salary… Anyone who has sat in prison for more than 30 years gets NIS 12,000 ($3,360) per month,

” said Kuperwasser, according to the (Hebrew) NRG website. “When they’re released, they get a grant and are promised a job at the Palestinian Authority. They get a military rank that’s determined according to the number of years they’ve served in jail.”

Kuperwasser also told the committee that PA claims that the payments to terrorists’ families are social welfare benefits to the needy are false. The Palestinians’ own budgetary documents, he said, “clearly state that these are salaries and not welfare payments.”

Kuperwasser was briefing MKs days after US President Donald Trump visited Israel and held talks with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem. In an apparent public upbraiding of Abbas over the payments, Trump told him at their joint press conference: “Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded or rewarded.”

Israel’s Channel 2 TV reported on Sunday night that, behind closed doors in Bethlehem, Trump fumed at Abbas for lying to him. “You tricked me in DC! You talked there about your commitment to peace, but the Israelis showed me your involvement in incitement [against Israel],” Trump was said to have shouted at a shocked Abbas.

The TV report said the outburst was followed by several minutes of silence from the Palestinians, and that the meeting was very tense before the two sides managed to get back on track.

Palestinian sources denied the report, saying the meeting was good and to the point. And the Palestinian Ma’an news agency quoted a PA official on Monday accusing Israeli media of “lying” about what went on in the talks in order to torpedo a return to the negotiating table “because the Israelis don’t want to achieve peace.”

The Israel Hayom daily on Monday quoted an unnamed Palestinian official offering further details of the alleged stormy confrontation, however. This official said the talks “started on a positive note,” but the meeting “deteriorated after Trump accused Abbas of supporting incitement and terrorism with the salaries paid to prisoners.”

According to this report, “Trump made it clear to Abbas that he must curb anti-Israeli incitement in the Palestinian education system, saying Abbas cannot turn a blind eye to Palestinian incitement and pay stipends to terrorists’ families while simultaneously setting conditions that hinder any progress in the peace talks.”

Abbas reportedly responded that “in the past, there was a joint Palestinian-Israeli committee that sought to deal with incitement on both sides, but it has not met for years. As for the prisoners’ stipends, those are paid by the PLO’s prisoner authority, not the Palestinian government.”

At this point, according to the Israel Hayom report, “Trump lost his patience and interrupted Abbas, banging his fist on the table and admonishing him, saying, ‘You can talk about how much you want peace, but that’s empty [rhetoric].'”

At the Knesset meeting on Monday, Kuperwasser, today a project director at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs think tank, said that for many years the US and Israel had largely ignored the significance of the payments and that it only became a major issue in the last six months. Now the US Congress is pushing punitive legislation — the Taylor Force Act. The PA channels the payments indirectly, via a non-government “payment fund,” he said.

“There was a willingness to believe the lies that it was social support. In practice, no steps have been taken to change the situation and in the meantime, the Palestinians are trying to depict themselves as supporting peace while they are still paying the families of terrorists,” said Kuperwasser. “Assurance of a cash prize for acts of terror is encouragement to terrorism, and is against international law, international conventions, the Oslo accords, and other agreements that they have signed on.”

The committee’s chairman, Avi Dichter (Likud), said he would schedule a session with top-tier security and political officials to review what action Israel should take in response to what he said was continued Palestinian incitement to terror.

Dichter, a former director of the Shin Bet security service, declared: “The State of Israel cannot get involved in a political process aimed at peace when those who are supposed to be our partners incite [to terror]. For years, not only has it [incitement] not decreased, it has increased.”

Israel has long accused the Palestinians, including Abbas’s Fatah party, of fanning hatred on social media and calling for violence against Israelis.

At Monday’s Knesset committee meeting, Dore Gold, a former Foreign Ministry director-general, said Israel’s opposition to terror payments had not been made sufficiently clear since he left his post in October 2016. “The idea that a body such as the Palestinian Authority pays money as compensation to families who lost their sons as they were engaged in terror is unacceptable and contradicts common sense. Former US secretary of state Colin Powell called it ‘providing an incentive to terrorism,'” he said.

Haim Jelin (Yesh Atid) criticized the government, saying, “There is a lack of willingness to to take steps against the Palestinian Authority. They’re frightened of an escalation or that the PA will collapse, or that it won’t look good to Muslim communities around the world.”

Moti Yogev (Jewish Home) claimed that Hitler and former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein were being held up as role models in the Palestinian education system, and that “little girls in kindergarten declare that the Jews are worse than pigs, that they raped their mothers and murdered their fathers with axes.” Yogev called for economic and security-related sanctions to be imposed on the PA.

Along with criticism, Trump, at his press conference with Abbas, offered praise to the PA leader for being “committed to taking firm but necessary steps to fight terrorism and confront its hateful ideology.

On May 3 in Washington, at the first meeting between the two, Trump urged Abbas to stop incitement, crack down on terrorism, and “resolve” his government’s police of paying stipends to terrorists and their families.

Abbas, for his part, told Trump in their joint White House press conference that “we are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace.”

In the wake of that claim, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Abbas for the remark, saying it was “unfortunately not true.” The PA, Netanyahu charged, “names their schools after mass murderers of Israelis and pay terrorists.”

A report released last month from the Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) group found that PA textbooks for first to fourth grades were demonizing Israel and glorifying “martyrdom.” The document cited an “alarming deterioration” in content since the previous study.

The issue has taken on increasing significance of late, as members of Congress have threatened to decrease US aid to Palestinians if PA-sponsored incitement is not curbed.

PA CUTTING SALARIES OF CIVIL SERVANTS TO PAY FULL BENEFITS TO TERRORISTS
TheTower Staff,  26 March 2019 03.2019

The Palestinian Authority has decided to penalize its law-abiding employees to avoid cutting salaries of Palestinian terrorists and their families under the so-called “pay-to-slay” scheme, which led the United States and Israel to cut aid until the PA stops inciting terror.

Explaining the decision, Nabil Abu Rudeina, PA Deputy Prime Minister and Fatah Commissioner of Information, said: “The salaries of the families of the martyrs and the prisoners will be paid regardless of the cost, and that it is not possible to abandon or treat lightly the livelihood of the Palestinian people’s heroes.”

Abu Rudeina added that “non-payment of the public employees’ salaries,” on the other hand, “is less significant than subtracting one penny from the family of a martyr or prisoner, who sacrificed his life and freedom for Palestine and its heroic people.”

As an example, he referenced the case of Karim Younes, a Palestinian terrorist who, together with his cousin Maher Younis, kidnapped and murdered Israeli soldier Avraham Bromberg in 1980.

Israel’s Diplomatic-Security Cabinet decided in February to implement a major slash in the tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the PA with the amount the PA pays to terrorists and their families to be deducted from the aid Israel hands over to the Palestinian leadership. The PA paid out some 502 million shekels ($138 million) to living terrorists in 2018, according to recent Israeli media reports.

PA Minister of Finance Shukri Bishara reiterated the decision to cut the salaries of law-abiding employees while paying in full the salaries to imprisoned terrorists and released terrorists, as well as the allowances to wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorists.

In a televised press conference, the minister announced that “the salaries were transferred in full to the prisoners, the wounded and the martyrs according to the orders of His Honor [P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas]. This is one of the national principles which no force on earth can make us deviate from.”

Last year, PA President Mahmoud Abbas swore he would make paying terrorists a top priority. “By Allah, even if we have only a penny left it will only be spent on the families of the martyrs and prisoners and only afterward will it be spent on the rest of the people,” Abbas vowed.

His announcement also revealed that 40 percent of PA employees earn less than 2,000 shekels per month (about $535). It demonstrates the reality that under the so-called “pay-to-slay” scheme, Palestinians terrorists who have been in prison for a cumulative period of three years earn higher salaries than 40 percent of the PA’s law-abiding public employees.

In an op-ed published in JNS in January, TIP CEO and President Joshua S. Block observed that, “the decision to reject all U.S. aid money means that the P.A. has chosen terror over the well-being of its own civilian population.”

Block added: “Israel is told that it must make sacrifices for peace. In this instance, the P.A. is making a sacrifice so that it doesn’t have to make peace.”

On March 23, 2018, the Taylor Force Act, which passed both houses of Congress, became law, ending most U.S. aid to the PA until the Palestinian leadership stops paying stipends to terrorists and their families.

HOW BRITISH AND AMERICAN AID SUBSIDISES PALESTINIAN TERRORISM
US and UK taxpayers fund the Palestinian Authority, which in turn funds prisoners in Israeli jails. It's dangerously dysfunctional

The Guardian (UK) Edwin Black 11 November 2013

On both sides of the pond, in London and Washington, policymakers are struggling to weather their budget crises. Therefore, it may astound American and British taxpayers that the precious dollars and pounds they deploy in Israel and the Occupied Territories funds terrorism.

The instrument of this funding is US and UK programs of aid paid to the Palestinian Authority. This astonishing financial dynamic is known to most Israeli leaders and western journalists in Israel. But it is still a shock to most in Congress and many in Britain's Parliament, who are unaware that money going to the Palestinian Authority is regularly diverted to a program that systematically rewards convicted prisoners with generous salaries. These transactions in fact violate American and British laws that prohibit US funding from benefiting terrorists. More than that, they could be seen as incentivizing murder and terror against innocent civilians.

Here's how the system works. When a Palestinian is convicted of an act of terror against the Israeli government or innocent civilians, such as a bombing or a murder, that convicted terrorist automatically receives a generous salary from the Palestinian Authority. The salary is specified by the Palestinian "law of the prisoner" and administered by the PA's Ministry of Prisoner Affairs. A Palestinian watchdog group, the Prisoners Club, ensures the PA's compliance with the law and pushes for payments as a prioritized expenditure. This means that even during frequent budget shortfalls and financial crisis, the PA PA pays the prisoners' salaries first and foremost – before other fiscal obligations.

The law of the prisoner narrowly delineates just who is entitled to receive an official salary. In a recent interview, Ministry of Prisoners spokesman Amr Nasser read aloud that definition:

A detainee is each and every person who is in an Occupation prison based on his or her participation in the resistance to Occupation.

This means crimes against Israel or Israelis. Nasser was careful to explain:

It does not include common-law thieves and burglars. They are not included and are not part of the mandate of the ministry.

Under a sliding scale, carefully articulated in the law of the prisoner, the more serious the act of terrorism, the longer the prison sentence, and consequently, the higher the salary. Incarceration for

• up to three years fetches a salary of almost $400 per month.
• Prisoners behind bars for between three and five years will be paid about $560 monthly – a compensation level already higher than that for many ordinary West Bank jobs.
• Sentences of ten to 15 years fetch salaries of about $1,690 per month.
• Still worse acts of terrorism against civilians, punished with sentences between 15 and 20 years, earn almost $2,000 per month.

These are the best salaries in the Palestinian territories. The Arabic word ratib, meaning "salary", is the official term for this compensation. The law ensures the greatest financial reward for the most egregious acts of terrorism.

In the Palestinian community, the salaries are no secret; they are publicly hailed in public speeches and special TV reports. The New York Times and the Times of Israel have both mentioned the mechanism in passing. Only British and American legislators seem to be uninformed about the payments.

From time to time, the salaries are augmented with special additional financial incentives. For example, in 2009, a $150-per-prisoner bonus was approved to mark the religious holiday of Eid al-Adha. President Mahmoud Abbas also directed that an extra $190 "be added to the stipends given to Palestinians affiliated with PLO factions in Israeli prisons this month". Reporting on the additional emolument, the Palestinian news service Ma'an explained:

Each PLO-affiliated prisoner [already] receives [a special allocation of] $238 per month, plus an extra $71 if they are married, and an extra $12 for each child. The stipend is paid by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) each month.

About 6% of the Palestinian budget is diverted to prisoner salaries. All this money comes from so-called "donor countries" such as the United States, Great Britain, Norway, and Denmark. Palestinian officials have reacted with defiance to any foreign governmental effort to end the salaries. Deputy Minister of Prisoners Affairs Ziyad Abu Ein declared to satellite TV network Hona Al-Quds:

If the financial assistance and support to the PA are stopped, the [payment of] salaries (Rawatib) and allowances (Mukhassasat) to Palestinian prisoners will not be stopped, whatever the cost may be. The prisoners are our joy. We will sacrifice everything for them and continue to provide for their families.

Many believe foreign aid is an investment in peace between the warring parties in Israel and disputed lands. That investment might have a greater chance for success if terrorism did not pay as well as it does – with taxpayers footing the bill.

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY MARTYRS FUND
Wikipedia

The Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund is a fund operated by the Palestinian Authority for the purpose of paying a monthly cash stipend to the families of Palestinians killed, injured or imprisoned for involvement in attacking, assisting in attacking, or planning to attack Israel, or for other types of politically-inspired violence, including riots, violent demonstrations, and throwing rocks, and also for paying cash stipends to the families of innocent bystanders killed during violent events. In addition, it provides pocket money to all Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails for ordinary crimes.

The Fund traces its origins to a fund created by Fatah in 1964 to support the widows and orphans of Palestinian fedayeen.

HISTORY

The Palestine Mujahidin and Martyrs Fund was established in 1964 by Fatah to recompense the families of dead and wounded militants. In 1971 it was replaced by the Society for the Care of Palestinian Martyrs and Prisoners. The Society defined as "military martyrs" not only as Palestinian fedayeen killed during terrorist operations, but to include fedayeen who died of natural causes while on active service. Their families received cash stipends. Non-members of the Palestine Liberation Organization killed during any kind of encounter with Israeli security forces were given a one-time payment; this created an incentive for families to apply posthumously to have their dead relatives reclassified as fighters.

SAMED, the Palestine Martyrs Works Society, was founded in 1970; it handled some of the "martyr payments and provided employment in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon in the 1970s.

The payments were routinized during the Second Intifada (2000–2005). In 2016, it made payments to 35,000 families, including the families of suicide bombers, from a 2016 annual budget of $170 million. The stipend is higher than the average Palestinian wage.

The question of whether militants from all political factions will receive Palestinian Authority subsidies has been highly contested within Palestinian society; President Mahmoud Abbas withdrew, then in 2009 restored, subsidies for prisoners belonging to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, but this government claims that it does not pay subsidies to families of prisoners belonging to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

In 2010 (or 2014), mounting criticism of the stipends caused the Palestinian Authority to return management of the Martyrs Fund to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which now disburses the government-funding to terrorists and their families.

NAMES

The fund is often referred to as the Martyrs Fund, and, pejoratively, as "Pay for Slay."

The a series of funding agencies have existed over the decades, including "Fund for Families of Martyrs and the Injured."

FUNDING[

In 2017, half of the $693 million that the PA receives as foreign aid, $345 million, was paid out as stipends to convicted terrorists and their families

FUND DISTRIBUTION

The funding system pays regular stipends to individuals and to the surviving families of individuals who carry out terrorist attacks, including suicide bombers, against Israelis and their survivors, and to individuals injured in violent demonstrations and riots and in mob attacks on Israeli civilians or security forces.The agencies that disburse the funds employ over 500 bureaucrats.

Funds are dispersed via separate agencies, one for families of prisoners and the other for the general population, including convicted terrorists released in prisoner exchanges. Both agencies are "PLO institutions," but they are both funded by the Palestinian Authority.

PRISONER FUND

Under the Amended Palestinian Prisoners Law No. 19 (2004), terrorists who have served a year or more in an Israeli prison are entitled upon release to health insurance and tuition free school, university and professional education. If they become civil servants, the law stipulates that the Palestinian Authority will "pay his social security and pension fees . . . for the years he spent in prison.” Incarcerated terrorists are entitled to monthly stipends "linked to the cost-of-living index." The 2013 amendments to the law entitle terrorists released form prison to preference in getting jobs with the Palestinian Authority, and stipulates that the PA "will make up the difference" if the civil service salary "is lower than the salary he received in prison." Female terrorists who have served 2 years in prison, and males who have served 5 are entitled to receive stipends for the rest of their lives.

FOUNDATION FOR THE CARE OF THE FAMILIES OF MARTYRS

The Foundation is dedicated to assisting an Arab who has been "wounded, killed, or otherwise affected as a result of their joining the revolution or the presence of the revolution," against Israel and operates within the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Social Affairs. In 2016 it supported 35,100 families.

Countering Palestinian Authority claims that this is a welfare fund, the World Bank has stated that, "the program is clearly not targeted to the poorest households. While some assistance should be directed to this population, the level of resources devoted to the Fund for Martyrs and the Injured does not seem justified from a welfare or fiscal perspective."

STIPENDS

Stipends are paid to families of both prisoners and Palestinians killed in a contexts ranging from political demonstrations that turn violent where protesters are killed by non-lethal riot control methods (such as being hit by a tear gas cannister) and to individuals imprisoned for "common crimes". The fund also pays $106 a month in "canteen money" to all imprisoned Palestinians, including those imprisoned for non-political crimes such as car theft and drug dealing, for prisoners to spend in the prison canteen.

Families of terrorists killed by Israeli security forces are paid stipends of about $800 to $1,000 per month. The families of convicted terrorists serving time in Israeli prisons receive $3,000 or higher per month. According to Yossi Kuperwasser of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, in 2017 the Palestinian Authority was paying out $300 million annually in terrorism stipends, which tallies to about 7 percent of the Authority's annual budget, and to more than 20% of the total foreign aid donations given to the Authority by all governments.

Douglas J. Feith calls the stipends "cash incentives" to spur Arabs to undertake car ramming and stabbing as a terrorist tactic.

Salam Fayyad, a former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister and Finance Minister, stated that between January 1995 and June 2002 the fund distributed 16 million Israeli shekels to families of prisoners annually, and between June 2002 to June 2004 88.5 million Israeli shekels annually.

In 2017 the National Association of the Martyrs’ Families of Palestine demanded cost of living increases in their stipends, which had been unchanged since 2011.

Private charities including the U.S. based Holyland Foundation have been accused of funding the stipends.

HAMAS

Hamas has operated a separate Martyrs Fund since well before the 2007 insurgent coup d'etat resulting in the Hamas' takeover of Gaza.

In 2001 Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, boasted that Hamas payments to the families of prisoners and of suicide bombers totaled between $2 and $3 million. But according to a 2001 Israeli government report, the families of prisoners received an initial lump sum payment of $500 – $5000, with monthly stipends of about $100, with higher payments for the families of Hamas members.[

The Hamas-controlled Unlimited Friends Association for Social Development (UFA) in Gaza is supported by eight registered U.S. charities. By its own account, UFA distributes cash both to the needy and to "the families of martyrs and prisoners," and " “families of martyrs of the Palestinian people."

ATTITUDE OF PALESTINIAN SOCIETY

The "martyr" payments are "exceedingly popular" among Palestinians and have been described as "part of the ethos of Palestinian society."Ziad Asali, founding president of the American Task Force on Palestine, told a reporter that Palestinian politicians and the media have elevated these payments to the point where they are "sacred in Palestinian politics," and no government dares terminate the practice.

Professor Nathan Brown of George Washington University says that the stipends to prisoner's families are "universally supported among Palestinians."

The Palestinian Prisoners' Club defends the stipends, the Club's leader, Qadura Fares, maintains that payments supporting the families of prisoners are just because the families, "are a part of our people" and that "the family did nothing against anyone." According to Fares, the attacks for which the prisoners were convicted are "not terror," but "part of the struggle" against Israel.

In June, 2017, Palestinian Authority President Mahmood Abbas called efforts to stop the martyr payments an "aggression against the Palestinian people," and defended the salaries paid to imprisoned Palestinians as a "social responsibility."

RESPONSE BY GOVERNMENTS

Israel

Prime Minister Netanyahu calls the payments "an incentive for murder". The Israeli government, describing the payments as glorifying terrorism, responded to the 2016 killing of Hallel Yaffa Ariel by threatening to deduct the value of "Martyr" payments from the tax revenue it pays to the Palestinian Authority. The United States has threatened to deduct the sums paid out to "martyrs" via the fund from the subsidies it grants to the Palestinian Authority.

A bill introduced in the Israeli Knesset in 2017 would reduce the flow of tax payments collected by Israeli inland revenue on behalf of the Palestinian Authority to the Authority by the sum of annual payouts from the Martyrs Fund

Speaking before the United Nations Security Council on the 24th of June 2017, Israeli ambassador Danny Danon, together with Oran Almog, one of the victims of the Maxim restaurant suicide bombing, demanded that the Palestinian Authority cease incentivizing terrorism by paying stipends to terrorists.

Germany

The government of Germany is reviewing the payment of foreign aid to the PA in the light of the use of these funds to incentivize terrorism.

Norway

In 2016 Børge Brende, foreign Minister of Norway, demanded that the PA cease using Norwegian foreign aid for "martyr" stipends. He was satisfied with an assurance that Norwegian funds would not be used for the stipends, although the change was purely "cosmetic" since PA funds are fungible.

United States

The Taylor Force Act, a bill proposed in the United States Congress in 2016 would end foreign aid payments to the Palestinian Authority until the payment of stipends to terrorists and their surviving families ends.

TERRORIST ACCUSED OF KILLING A BRITISH STUDENT WILL BE PAID £800 A MONTH BY THE PALESTINIAN GOVERNMENT WHICH RECEIVES £25M-A-YEAR UK FOREIGN AID

• Palestinian Jamil Tamimi murdered British theology student Hannah Bladon
• He told police that he attacked Hannah in the hope a soldier would kill him   
• His family qualify for a 'salary' from the Palestinian Authority of £800 a month
  Palestine receives more than £25 million a year from the UK in foreign aid

The Mail on Sunday, Nick Craven, 24 April 2017

A terrorist accused of murdering a British student in Jerusalem will be paid a salary of more than £800 a month by the Palestinian government – which receives more than £25 million a year from the UK in foreign aid.

Jamil Tamimi, who has a history of mental health issues, killed theology student Hannah Bladon in a frenzied knife attack on Good Friday after the 21-year-old gave up her seat on a tram to a woman with a baby.

The 57-year-old Palestinian told police that he attacked Hannah, a Birmingham University exchange student attached to Jerusalem's Hebrew University, in the hope that a soldier in the carriage would kill him.

Hannah Bladon was a Birmingham University exchange student attached to Jerusalem's Hebrew University +3

Instead Tamimi was arrested and is almost certain to be lauded as a resistance 'hero' by the Palestinian Authority (PA), like hundreds of others before him.

An Israeli court has already ruled, following a psychiatric evaluation, that he is fit to stand trial and should be treated as a terrorist by the justice system.

It means Tamimi or his family qualify for a 'salary' from the PA, according to Itamar Marcus, the founder and director of the Israeli monitoring group Palestinian Media Watch.

'According to PA law, everyone who is imprisoned for 'resisting the occupation' receives a PA salary,' he said. 'In PA practice, 100 per cent of the suicide bombers, stabbers, shooters and car rammers have been included in this category and do receive PA salaries.'

Terrorists who have 'resisted the occupation' are paid a monthly amount by the PA and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) on a sliding scale related to their sentence.

An Israeli court has ruled that murderer Jamil is fit to stand trial and should be treated as a terrorist by the justice system +3

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's official spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, tweeted his outrage, saying: 'Not only didn't PA president Abbas condemn Hannah Bladon's murder, but he'll reward the Palestinian attacker who did it with a monthly salary.'

Influential commentator Avi Mayer, a former spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces, added: 'If you're British and you pay taxes, know that your money is going to fund a body that rewards convicted murderers.'

British taxpayers give the PA £25 million a year from foreign aid for health and education.

The Mail on Sunday has repeatedly highlighted the way in which such funding has been abused, and the news comes as our poll shows a pledge to continue spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on aid will be a voter loser for the Tories. Last month, we exposed how terrorism was openly promoted to pupils at West Bank schools named after mass murderers and Islamist militants.

Last December, the Department for International Development announced that it would restrict its payments to the PA to health and education with a 'vetted list' of public servants. But critics point out that when British taxpayers' cash goes to education and health, it frees up money in other budgets controlled by the PA.

DFID said: 'UK financial support is only used to provide essential health and education services to Palestinians, as part of our efforts to help deliver peace and the two-state solution. We have extensive precautions in place to ensure that UK money does not support terror groups or organisations.'

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
CONTINUES ITS “PAY FOR SLAY” POLICY
Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser is Director of the Project on Regional Middle East Developments at the Jerusalem Center.
He was formerly Director General of the
Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs
and head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence.
TheJerusalemCenter 2018 (8.21)

In 2017, we published a paper that revealed the fact that the Palestinian Authority is paying by law salaries to terrorists arrested in Israeli jails and to the families of deceased terrorists and injured terrorists as well. The 2018 budget that we have seen recently tells us that the Palestinian Authority keeps paying those salaries without any change, and in the budget now they give more details about the number of terrorists that are getting these salaries. For example, in the Palestinian Authority’s budget, they mention that 5,000 terrorists arrested in Israeli jails are getting salaries from the Palestinian Authority, and of course, according to this law, those who serve longer time in jail get higher salaries and the salary grows as the time you spend in jail grows as well.  On top of that, 5,500 convicted terrorists that were released from jail are also getting salaries because these salaries go on after you are released. About 1,200 arrested terrorists that are going to be released during this year are going to get a “release grant,” and
the Palestinian Authority also takes care of other expenditures of the terrorists that are in jail
and make sure that the families get special treatment.

What we’ve seen recently is that during 2018 – by the way, to a large extent following the study we published in 2017 - both the U.S. Congress and the Israeli Knesset adopted laws that say that Israel and the United States are no longer going to be in a state of willful blindness and they are going to take action to distance themselves from this pattern of the Palestinian Authority. The American administration accepted the law that the Congress adopted, and according to this law the Palestinian Authority is not getting any more financial support from the United States. They lost something like more than $200 million. Maybe $300 million were taken away from them just because they insist on going on with this practice.

Israel has adopted a law that is called the “Stern Law,” that says that in 2019, beginning this January, it’s going to deduct from the money it transfers to the Palestinians. Based on the money Israel collects for the Palestinians from taxes and tariffs, Israel is going to deduct from this money every month, one-twelfth of this money that the Palestinians used for paying salaries to terrorists in 2018. So this number is very important because it tells us how much money the Palestinians actually spent on paying salaries to terrorists in 2018, altogether, as I said, about NIS 1.27 billion or $350 million, and if you cut it by 12, it means that the Palestinians are going to lose in 2019 something like NIS 100 million every month.

This, of course, is causing a lot of concern to the Palestinian leadership, but at the same time Abu Mazen, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, chairman, is saying quite clearly that he’s going to keep on paying the salaries to terrorists come what may, and even if he has only one penny left, he is going to use it in order to pay salaries to terrorists.  The reason he says so is that for the Palestinians, this group of terrorists are considered to be heroes. According to the law that enables the payment, the terrorists are considered to be the fighting sector of the Palestinian society. So of course, they consider them eligible to get these high salaries. Abu Mazen even said that “we actually sent them,
so we are committed to them. We have to pay them.”

This is, of course, a very unacceptable situation and it stands in total contradiction to the Palestinian commitments in the Oslo agreement.  I think that as time goes by and the Palestinians will understand there is a price for this policy, they will have to reconsider.  But for the time being, they are saying that they are committed to it and they are also inventing all kinds of justifications and reasons why they have to do it. For example, they say that this is some sort of welfare given to the families left without a breadwinner, and things like that. This is, of course, ridiculous because there is in the Palestinian Authority a special chapter that deals with welfare, and the funny thing is that whereas the families that need welfare get, according to the Palestinian budget, something between NIS 750-1,800, the terrorists in jail get much more than that. Those who really committed terrible acts of terror and spend a lot of time in jail get NIS 12,000 a month, and in the time they spent in jail they earn something like NIS 6 to 7 million. They become millionaires once they finish their time in jail. That’s the difference between welfare and incentivizing terror.
That’s what the Palestinians are doing, and that has to stop.

_______________________________________

CONTINUED PA PAYMENTS TO TERRORISTS IN 2018
UNDERSCORE NEED TO IMPLEMENT NEW ISRAELI LAW
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

The detailed Palestinian Authority budget for 2018 that was published recently has new details about the allocations to arrested terrorists and the families of those who died or were wounded in the context of the “struggle against Zionism:”

The total PA budget is $5 billion. The amount that supports prisoners is $155 million, out of which $147 million are spent on transfers to the prisoners. These include salaries to 5,000 prisoners, paying Israeli fines for 1,200 prisoners, grants to 1,500 prisoners upon their discharge, grants for 1,200 unemployed released prisoners, delayed payments to 1,000 prisoners, salaries for 5,500 released prisoners, unspecified amounts to released prisoners who spent more than 10 years in jail, canteen expenditures for 6,000 prisoners, and clothing allocations for 5,000 prisoners.

The PA budget for supporting the families of “martyrs” and the wounded is $185 million. This sum is used to make sure that 24,000 families of “martyrs” and wounded who reside inside the “homeland” get a monthly allowance, 13,500 such families who reside outside the “homeland” get a monthly allowance, 375 families get special monetary assistance, 28,000 families get health insurance, and monthly allowances are paid to the victims of the 2014 conflict in Gaza. On top of all this, the budget is used to finance a variety of benefits to the family members (such as going on pilgrimages and exemptions from education tuition).

Additional, unspecified amounts are included in the budget of the PA security forces and are used for paying salaries to members of the security forces who are under arrest for carrying out terror attacks, and to the families of terrorists who died or were injured while they were members of the PA security forces.

The overall PA welfare budget is $212 million, which is used for assistance to 118,000 families, each of which receives $200–480, on top of a variety of benefits, including exemption for tuition to 80,000 pupils, help with health insurance and emergency assistance, food allocations, and more.

Dedicating around $340 million to arrested Palestinian terrorists and “martyrs,” which forms 7 percent of the overall annual budget for 2018, reflects the prominence the Palestinian Authority and its leadership give to incentivizing terror. Palestinian law considers terrorists as the “fighting sector of Palestinian society.” As U.S. and Israeli pressure increases on the Palestinian Authority to cease paying these incentives and revoke the law upon which they are paid, Mahmoud Abbas has insisted repeatedly that he will not do so. “Even if we are left with one penny, we are going to use it for paying the salaries to the Martyrs and prisoners of war,” he declared.

These details also refute once more the occasional Palestinian claims that the payments of salaries to the terrorists are a sort of welfare. It is evident that welfare payments are paid separately and are far smaller than the salaries and other benefits paid to the arrested terrorists.

The U.S. Taylor Force Act, passed in March 2018, prevents the United States from aiding the PA budget as long as the payment of stipends to terrorists continues. The law has already led to the cessation of American aid to the Palestinian Authority, except for support to the Palestinian security forces. As a result, the Palestinian Authority lost more than $200 million.

An Israeli law (known as the Stern Law) was approved in July 2018 and is supposed to be implemented for the first time in January 2019. It mandates that the Israeli government deduct on a monthly basis one-twelfth of the sum given to support terrorists and their families from the taxes and tariffs Israel collects and transfers to the Palestinian Authority based on the amount distributed in the previous year – in this case, in 2018. This may mean that about $21 million will be withheld monthly and kept in an escrow account, or even used to compensate victims of Palestinian terror.

The economic impact of these sanctions is going to be considerable, and more international donors may take similar steps. The Palestinian leadership will probably continue to resist the pressure in the beginning, but if these pressures persist, the Palestinians may have to reconsider their policy.

PAYMENTS TO PALESTINIANS
in PRISONS and as MARTYRS

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY CONTINUES ITS
“PAY FOR SLAY” POLICY
The Jerusalem Center 2018 (8.21

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