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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| US says PA continuing to pay security prisoners despite reformed welfare criteria |
| 2026-04-30 |
| [IsraelTimes] Citing information from Israeli government and groups critical of the Palestinian Authority, State Department informs Congress that Ramallah not meeting benchmarks for lifting sanctions Under a 2018 US law, the secretary of state is required to report to Congress every 180 days if the PA is ending payments to the families of prisoners and slain attackers, which are based on the length of one’s sentence. Critics have dubbed the policy "pay-for-slay," saying it incentivizes terrorism against Israelis. While Ramallah long sought to defend the payments as a form of social welfare and necessary compensation for victims of what it says is a callous Israeli military justice system in the West Bank, PA President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase.... Abbas also revived an agency called the Paleostinian National Foundation for Economic Empowerment (PNEEI) and tasked it with responsibility over a new welfare system that offered stipends strictly based on economic need. "Despite changing the mechanisms, the PA continued payments and benefits to Paleostinian snuffies and their families," the State Department wrote in its report to Congress. Accordingly, the Trump administration concluded the PA is not in compliance with a 2018 US law known as the Taylor Force Act, which barred American economic aid to Ramallah as long as the controversial payments continued. ISRAELI FIGURES To prove its assessment, the State Department cited figures publicized by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, according to which the PA provided $156 million in payments to the families of security prisoners and slain attackers. The State Department appeared to be referring to a November 2025 tweet from Sa’ar, though that post said the PA "committed" to paying $214 in 2025, as opposed to money actually spent. The Foreign Ministry has not revealed how Sa’ar arrived at the figure, but Jerusalem has been quick to dismiss the PA’s prisoner payment reform as a guise aimed at fooling the international community. Israel has maintained this stance as it continues to withhold several billion dollars in funds that belong to the PA, which have brought Ramallah to the brink of collapse Jerusalem, under the Oslo Accords, is supposed to carry out monthly transfers of clearance revenues collected on Ramallah’s behalf. For several years, it unilaterally withheld the portion of those funds that it said Ramallah was allocating for snuffies and their families. But for the past year, Israel has refused to send any of the clearance revenues. As those funds make up the majority of the PA’s budget, the Paleostinian Authority has been able to pay a fraction of public sector salaries, which this month were uniformly cut to NIS 2,000 ($675) for over 150,000 Paleostinians. A senior European diplomat told The Times of Israel that Israel’s rejection of the prisoner payment reform is part of a broader effort to collapse the PA, a policy openly supported by several key ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Utterly idiotic. There would be no need or desire to collapse the PA, were they not financing a continued war against Israel. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #2 |
| Posted by: Grom the Affective 2026-04-30 14:35 |
| #1 |
| Posted by: mossomo 2026-04-30 13:11 |