In a press briefing hosted by The Israel Project on Thursday, Micah Lakin Avni, the son of terror victim Richard Lakin, said that the PA “could decide whenever they want, to stop allocating those funds to terrorists.” The briefing focused on a Knesset committee’s approval of a bill that would deduct the Palestinian Authority’s payments to terrorists and their families from tax payments that the Israeli government transfers to the PA.

Avni was responding to a reporter’s question as to whether penalizing the PA by reducing its revenue would cause it collapse.

Avni answered that all governments have to make choices when it comes to spending limited funds, and that it was within the power of the PA to stop paying terrorists and their families. He said that if the PA “proactively decide[s] to use their funds to pay terrorists rather to pay teachers and doctors and nurses, and that brings to their downfall, then that is their own decision — a morally corrupt decision — but it is theirs to make.” He added, that the PA “could decide whenever they want, to stop allocating those funds to terrorists, and allocate them to teachers and doctors and social workers.”

Brig.-Gen. (Ret,) Yossi Kuperwasser, a former director general of the ministry for strategic affairs who is currently with the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs, also addressed the question, saying that he did not see that the PA would collapse from the reduction in the amount they receive from Jerusalem. He said that though the PA would complain about the penalty, and that “they may have to cut a little bit on corruption and other expenses, … they’re not going to even cut the payments for terrorists; they will not collapse.”

Earlier in the briefing, Avni had described how his father, Richard Lakin, had worked to promote coexistence between Jews and Arabs, and had made him value coexistence. However, he said that the PA’s practice of paying terrorists who killed Jews, which is mandated by what he called “a ‘pay to slay’ law, “drives us further away from peace,” and “teaches us the exact opposite of what’s needed to happen.”

He also noted that since his father was murdered in October 2015, “there have been elementary schools, summer camps, scouts’ programs, university programs, book clubs, all named after the terrorists who murdered my father.”

Kuperwasser described the extent of the program noting that the PA pays 580 million shekels ($158.6 million) a year to terrorists who have been arrested and are serving time in Israel jails. An additional 690 million shekels ($188.7 million) go to families of terrorist who have been killed, for a yearly total of 1.27 billion shekels ($347. 3 million).

The committee-approved legislation, which is expected to be voted into law on Monday before the full Knesset, would subtract from tax receipts that Israel transfers to the PA the amount of money that the PA pays to terrorists and their families. The money would be transferred to a fund to aid terror victims.

In March of this year, the United States Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, which would make aid to the PA contingent upon it ending the practice of paying terrorists. Taylor Force was a U.S. army veteran who was stabbed to death in a terror attack in March 2016.

The Jerusalem Post reported this week that the Trump administration has warned the PA that its aid is contingent on its ending its payments to terrorists.

A recording of the press briefing is embedded below.

[Photo: Micah Avni / YouTube]