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Netanyahu: Israel Will Deduct Terrorist Payment Money from PA Fund Transfers

by TheTower.org Staff |

Israel will reduce its scheduled payments to the Palestinian Authority by the amount that the PA admits spending on paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Friday.

This new policy is an apparent reaction to the brutal murder of 13-year-old Israeli-American Hallel Yaffa Ariel while she slept at home in Kiryat Arba in the West Bank on Thursday. The PA declared later that day that the terrorist who killed her was a “martyr,” making his family legally eligible to receive monthly stipends from the PA.

Photo: Hallel Yaffa Ariel, 13

“You don’t murder a sleeping child for peace, you don’t slit a little girl’s throat to protest a policy you don’t like,” Netanyahu said following the attack.

Criticism of the PA’s terrorist payment policy has grown in recent months. The Mail on Sunday reported in March that the PA was continuing to use British foreign aid money to pay the terrorists’ salaries despite having promised to do so. Several weeks later, the watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch showed that the PA was using aid money from other countries as well. PA President Mahmoud Abbas did not deny that his government paid salaries to terrorists when pressed by on that point in May by Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende.

The United Kingdom announced a probe last month into whether foreign aid money was being misused to pay salaries to terrorists.

In order to evade criticism of its terrorist payment policy, the PA abolished the department in charge of disbursing the payments, but created a new department of the Palestine Liberation Organization to make those payments instead—and then increased its annual contributions to the PLO in order to maintain (and then increase) the payment budget.

Since the amount of money awarded to the terrorists correlates to the amount of time they’re serving in prison. “The more gruesome the terrorism, the more money will be paid,” The Jerusalem Post reported in October.

[Photo: IsraeliPM / YouTube ]

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