The U.S. Congress is redoing the rules for the “Palestinian Authority” to get U.S. aid and I hope they’re taking this into account (along with the other issues about the PA going to the UN and/or forming a government with Hamas).
U.S. aid will be denied if they go to the UN for statehood or form a government with Hamas, according to the descriptions of the new legislation. Stopping the aid if the PA is using it to send salaries to mass murderers and other terrorists in Israeli prisons should also happen. What the PA is doing is illegal according to American law.
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.”
“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.
This is a description of the legislation being worked on, although it has an ominous stipulation that Obama can override the rules set out for the Palestinian Authority:
It also contains $513 million for the Palestinian Authority, though in order to receive any of the money dedicated for security assistance, the secretary of state must certify that the PA “is not attempting to establish or seek recognition at the United Nations of a Palestinian state outside of an agreement negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians.”
The Palestinians have announced they plan to seek unilateral recognition at the UN for a state this September, a move opposed by Israel as well as the US.
In addition, the Palestinians would forfeit the American economic assistance should “any power-sharing government of which Hamas is a member or that results from an agreement with Hamas” come to power.
Earlier this year, Hamas and Fatah signed such a deal, but it has yet to be implemented.
Other limitations on the Palestinians include a commitment working with the Israeli security authorities and stamping out terrorism and terror financing, though the president can waive the limitations if he determines providing the assistance is necessary for US national security.
Let’s hope that the U.S. Congress straightens this out soon.
