MK: US, EU funding of PA helps reward terrorists

Exclusive: MK Matalon writes letter to US Senate and EU Parliament recounting PA policy to pay $5000 to terrorists released in Schalit deal.

By LAHAV HARKOV
MK Moshe Matalon 311 (photo credit: Courtesy of Knesset)
MK Moshe Matalon 311
(photo credit: Courtesy of Knesset)
MK Moshe Matalon (Israel Beiteinu) sent a letter this week informing the budget committees of the US Senate and House of Representatives, and the European Parliament, of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s policy to pay murderers released from Israeli prisons $5,000.
Following the deal in which Gilad Schalit was released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, Matalon said he thought it was essential to inform the Senate, which allocates funds to the PA each year, that Abbas is rewarding “unrepentant terrorists.”
RELATED:Abbas to pay grants to prisoners released in Schalit deal
Israel released 477 prisoners on October 18 and is expected to release the remaining 550 at a later date.
Matalon wrote, “at the ceremony Abbas held in their honor in Ramallah, he is reported as having praised these individuals for their ‘courage and sacrifice.’ The atrocities referred to by Abbas as acts of ‘courage’...
include the murders of scores of innocents, including women and children.”
Matalon, a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and chairman of the Knesset Caucus for Disabled IDF Veterans and Bereaved Families, said $5,000 was granted to each released terrorist. He listed those who killed US citizens, such as Ihlan Tamimi and Muhammad Daglas, who bombed a Jerusalem restaurant in 2001.
Shoshana Greenbaum, a citizen of the US, was among the attack’s 15 victims.
Another released terrorist, Walid Anjas, was serving 36 life sentences for his attack on the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus in 2002, in which five Americans and one French citizen were killed.
“Many other American and European citizens have been killed by Palestinian terrorists in recent years,” Matalon wrote. “These $5,000 stipends are paid to the terrorists by the PA, which obtains substantial financial assistance from both the European Union and the United States.”
The Israel Beiteinu MK wrote to the senators: “I feel it incumbent upon myself to present these facts to you, as a fellow parliamentarian, not as interference in your parliamentary activities, but rather in order to ensure that the full facts are before you, as you deliberate on whether to continue extending financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority.”
Matalon told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that he hopes to build a coalition of parliamentarians in the US and the European Parliament budgetary committees, who support the goals of the letter, by helping them realize where their funds are being spent.