Salaries Rewarding Terrorists Won’t Be Stopped, Senior Palestinian Official Vows

A top Palestinian official “expressed his pride” in the terrorists, who “sacrifice[d] years of their lives for the freedom of the country and the people.”

By: Palestinian Media Watch and United with Israel Staff

The Palestinian Authority continues its policy of rewarding terrorist murderers with generous salaries, ignoring the international criticism and condemnation, while Director of the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, Qadri Abu Bakr, has emphasized that these salaries will continue.

The official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported last week that Abu Bakr “emphasized that the leadership, led by [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas, will continue to support the resolve of the prisoners and their families and will not succumb to the Israeli and American pressures calling to stop the Martyrs’ (Shahids) and prisoners’ salaries and allowances,” according to a translation by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).

The Palestinian official further “expressed his pride in the prisoners, who did not hesitate to sacrifice years of their lives for the freedom of the country and the people.”

Abu Bakr echoed Abbas, who recently said that Palestinian terrorists and murderers are “stars in the sky.”

“We view the Martyrs and prisoners as stars in the sky of the Palestinian people and the sky of the Palestinian people’s struggle, and they have priority in everything,” he said in July.

Last Penny for Terrorists

Abbas also stated that the last Palestinian penny would be spent on prisoners before being used for ongoing PA expenses. Abbas can say this because he knows that while foreign donors refuse to pay salaries to Palestinian terrorists many are willing to fund other PA expenses.

PMW noted that ironically, while the foreign donors are condemning the PA’s paying $355 million in payments to terrorist prisoners and families of terrorist “Martyrs”, simultaneously they are the ones facilitating these terror rewards by covering the other expenses. Some 44 percent of the amount the PA receives from foreign donors is spent by the PA on terror rewards.

“By Allah, even if we have only a penny left it will only be spent on the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners, and only afterwards will it be spent on the rest of the people,” Abbas vowed. “This is a group that we appreciate and respect, and we consider it the one paving the way to Palestine’s independence for the future generations.”

The PA has dedicated a significant portion of its budget, some seven percent, to directly incentivize the murder of Jews through stipends to terrorists and their families.

In its 2018 budget, the PA increased the funding and allocated $360 million for the Prisoners and Martyrs fund, which disperses payment to imprisoned terrorists, released terrorists and the families of dead terrorists.

Israel in July passed a law financially penalizing the Palestinian Authority (PA) for paying stipends to Palestinian terrorists, their families and the families of terrorists killed or injured during terror attacks.

The US in March passed a similar bill into law withholding funds from the PA until it ceases its practice of incentivizing terrorism through monthly stipends paid to terrorists.