If money talks, the Palestinian Authority is speaking volumes with the massive amounts it lavishes on violent criminals, regardless of the terror group with whom they are affiliated.
By United with Israel Staff, with files from Palestinian Media Watch
While the Palestinian Authority’s policy of furnishing financial rewards to terrorists is well-documented, a recent report by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reveals that these stipends can exceed the salaries earned by doctors and judges in Palestinian society.
According to the PMW report, which is based on translations of articles in the PA’s official daily paper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, among other sources, the salaries are enough to cultivate in members of the Hamas terror group admiration for its bitter rival the PA and its umbrella organization the PLO.
For example, Khader Mahjez, a self-identified terrorist arrested as a founding member of Hamas, explained, “The PLO did not agree with me about my affiliation with Hamas when I was one of its [Hamas’] founders, but when I was imprisoned on charges [of being affiliated with] Hamas, the PLO paid me compensation and did not ask me about my organizational affiliation.”
Marwan Abu Shariah chimed in with a similar tale, claiming, “I’m in favor of the PLO and concerned about its fate because when I was in prison my father went to a PLO ministry in Amman and received a monthly allowance from them for a married prisoner, without them asking him about my affiliation and my opinion of the PLO.”
He added, “I’m in favor of the PLO because I discovered that all of the prisoners, and prime among them the prisoners from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, receive their salaries from the PLO, and that sometimes they are higher than salaries of judges and doctors. This is while their factions did not give them and their families even a tenth of what the PLO gave them, despite the difficulties and harassment that the PLO is dealing with on this matter. If not for these salaries, their families would have been abandoned to their fate. The same is true about the martyrs and the wounded.”
According to PMW, “These rare statements show that [PA President Mahmoud] Abbas, using the PA’s payments to the terrorists, is buying the allegiance of the Palestinian residents in Gaza, one terrorist at a time.
Under the PA’s 2004 Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners, both prisoners and ex-convicts have a right to receive a payments from the PA, which admitted that in 2018 it paid more than $134.2 million in salaries and other benefits to terrorists and released prisoners.
Previously, PMW exposed the role that the PA’s pay-for-slay program pays in incentivizing terror, with Palestinians admitting that they deliberately carry out attacks just to receive PA payments for themselves or for their family.
For instance, Khaled Rajoub confessed that after accumulating massive debts, he tried to murder Israeli soldiers and hoped he would be killed himself in the process, “so that my children will receive a [PA] allowance and live happily.”
When Rajoub was asked if he would attempt murder again, he responded, “Of course, 100%. I’m telling you, if you’ll set me free, I’ll do it again as soon as possible. I’ll bring another car, and I’ll run over [soldiers] at the first military post I see. I’ll kill as many as possible, and they’ll shoot me, and I’ll die. There is no other solution.”
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