“Abbas has once again revealed his true intentions as he directly pays hundreds of millions of dollars to terrorists with blood on their hands,” Danon charged.
By: United with Israel Staff
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Danny Danon decried the decision by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to continue to fund payments to terrorist and their families from its official budget.
“[Palestinian leader] Mahmoud Abbas has once again revealed his true intentions as he directly pays hundreds of millions of dollars to terrorists with blood on their hands,” Danon charged on Wednesday.
“Once again, the Palestinians have responded to American initiatives aimed at reconciliation with support for terror and violence,” he added.
The PA has authorized its 2018 budget which includes payments of $355 million to convicted terrorists and the families of terrorists as part of their 2018 budget, according to a report published by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).
The PA budget for the Commission of Prisoner Affairs, which pays the salaries of terrorist prisoners and released prisoners, is set at $166 million, of which $158 million will go to terrorists.
Additionally, the budget for the Families of the Martyrs and Wounded Institution is set at $200 million, of which $197 million will go to the families of terrorists.
As such, the total payment by the PA for 2018 is set at $355 million, which is 7.47 percent of its operation budget of $4.76 billion in 2018, and some 44 percent of the funding the PA hopes to receive in foreign aid this year.
“It is very significant that for the first time since 2014, the PA has stopped attempting to hide that it is the PA that pays salaries to all the terrorist prisoners. This year, the PA openly lists the budget for these salaries to the Commission of Prisoners as a direct PA budget expense [listed as “transfer payments”],” the PMW report said.
‘Responsible’ Palestine Government?
Danon called on the international community and the UN to “join the US in their pledge to put an end to the funding of Palestinian terror.”
He was referring to a new US law, the Taylor Force Act, approved by the US Senate on Friday, which freezes US aid to the PA as long as it continues to incite and fund terror through “welfare” stipends for terrorists and their families
The bill, which received bipartisan support, is named for 28-year-old American tourist Taylor Force, who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist in Tel Aviv in March 2016.
Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour slammed the Taylor Force Act as “a hostile act to withdraw the economic assistance to the Palestinian people.”
The bill, he charged, does not enable “a responsible government such as the Palestine government in dealing with their political prisoners and their families and those who lose their lives in the struggle for the independence of our state. All these methods are arm-twisting, blackmailing, and will not break the will of the Palestinian people.”
JNS contributed to this report.
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