Palestinian Affairs

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Report: Palestinian Authority Steps Up “Pay to Slay” Policy in 2019 Despite Financial Crisis

by TheTower.org Staff |

Despite prolonged economic hardship, the Palestinian Authority (PA) increased its financial contributions under the sickening “pay to slay” policy in the first five months of 2019, paying no less than $65 million to Palestinian terrorists and their families, the watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch said Thursday.

The move represents an increase of almost 12 percent compared to data from the previous year at a time where millions of ordinary Palestinians struggle to survive.

“According to newly-released budget figures from the Palestinian Authority, it has increased the ‘pay-to-slay’ salaries provided to perpetrators of terrorist acts against Israelis, providing lifetime pensions to perpetrators or to their surviving relatives,” Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CoP) Chairman Arthur Stark and Executive Vice Chairman and CEO Malcolm Hoenlein said in a statement.

“At a time when they are cutting salaries of Palestinian Authority employees, they are increasing the amounts set aside to those who murder and wound Israelis,” the pair noted, adding “despite the condemnation of most of the Western world of the practice of rewarding and inciting such wanton acts of terror and destruction.”

40 percent of PA employees earn less than $535 per month – reflecting the bleak reality that under the “pay-to-slay” scheme, Palestinian 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.

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 $138 million to living terrorists in 2018, according to Israeli media reports.

In March 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 inciting terrorism.

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