The Palestinian Authority spends more than $5 million a month paying salaries to
terrorists sitting in Israeli prisons, according to a Palestinian Media Watch
report presented to congressmen in Washington on Tuesday.
According to
the report, written by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, such payments
contravene US law, which prohibits funding of any person who “engages in, or has
engaged in terrorist activity.
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PA'“The US funds the PA’s general budget,”
the document reads. “Through the PA budget the US is paying the salaries of
terrorist murderers in prison and funding the glorification and role modeling of
terrorists.”
Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, met with
Republican lawmakers on Tuesday to discuss the report, amid efforts to get US
congressmen – on the eve of the Palestinian move to gain statehood recognition
at the UN in September – to cut US funds to the PA, not because of the Hamas and
Fatah reconciliation, but because of the PA’s support and glorification of
terrorists.
According to the report, “A law signed and published in the
official Palestinian Authority Registry in April 2011 puts all Palestinians and
Israeli Arabs imprisoned in Israel for terror crimes on the PA payroll to
receive a monthly salary from the PA.”
The report says this law
“formalizes what has long been a PA practice.”
Those eligible for the
payments, according to the report, are “anyone imprisoned in the occupation’s
[Israel’s] prisons as a result of his participation in the struggle against the
occupation.”
Quoting from Al-Hayat al- Jadida, an official daily
newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, the report said that more than 5,500
Palestinian prisoners receive these funds.
Palestinian car thieves in
Israeli prisons will not receive a salary, but every terrorist in prison
including murderers are on the PA payroll, the report said, adding that “the
salary goes directly to the terrorist or the terrorist’s family.”
The
report said the average monthly salary for terrorist prisoners is NIS 3,129,
more than the average monthly wage for a PA civil servant.
According to
the report, the payments are dependent on foreign funding, and the PA law
governing the payments stipulates that they “will be implemented... on the basis
of available sources of funding.”
The US provided some $600m. to the PA
in 2010, including $225m. in direct budgetary assistance to the PA.
The
2010 appropriations act governing assistance to the West Bank and Gaza
stipulated that the Secretary of State “shall take all appropriate steps to
ensure that such assistance is not provided to or through any individual,
private or government entity, or educational institution that the Secretary
knows or has reason to believe advocates, plans, sponsors, engages in, or has
engaged in, terrorist activity...”
The report also documented cases of
the PA honoring and glorifying terrorists for attacks, which is also contrary to
US law that stipulated that no US funds to the West Bank “may be made available
for the purpose of recognizing or otherwise honoring individuals who commit, or
have committed acts of terrorism.”
Among the examples listed in the
report of the PA glorifying terrorists are a summer camp for children sponsored
by PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in which campers were divided into three
groups named after terrorists: Dalal Mughrabi, who led the Coastal Road Massacre
in 1978; Salah Khalaf, head of Black September that carried out the Munich
Massacre in 1972; and Abu Ali Mustafa, the general secretary of the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine that carried out numerous terrorist
attacks.