Towards the end of April, the IDF warned Palestinian banks it would crack down on branches processing terror stipends from the Palestinian Authority. The PA’s Martyrs Fund disburses millions of dollars a month to Palestinian prisoners and the families of dead terrorists. According to the new regulations, banks where these payouts are deposited risk Israeli sanctions for violating terror finance laws.
Facing Israeli pressure, the banks last week began freezing the accounts of around 12,000 accounts receiving deposits from the Martyrs Fund. That prompted clashes outside some of the banks. Where things stand now, PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh instructed the banks to reactivate the frozen accounts. The PA vows to continue the payments.
These stipends don’t just incite Palestinians to attack Israelis, they provide economic incentives as well. It’s a handout better — and more accurately — known as “pay for slay.” That’s why Israel has deducted around NIS 700 million (almost $200 million) in tax revenues it collects and transfers to the PA since 2019.
According to other largely overlooked Israeli media reports, this weekend, Israel’s Finance Ministry will return the deducted tax revenues to the PA in the form of an NIS 800 million ($228 million) loan. It appears that this loan was a political decision intended to keep financially-strapped PA afloat and not related to the banking sanctions.
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Dollars and Sense
If you want to have a conversation about the merits of the Martyrs Fund and Israel’s measures against it, you’ll need more information than what you would have seen in coverage from the Associated Press, Reuters and New York Times.
By 2017, the payments to prisoners and the families of the so-called “martyrs” equaled half of the PA’s foreign budgetary aid, or a whopping seven percent of the overall PA budget.
The most recent figures indicate that in 2019, the PA spent NIS 619 million ($176 million) on stipends in 2019 just for incarcerated Palestinians. Figures on what was paid to the families weren’t available because the PA isn’t transparent about the Martyrs Fund’s finances. This prompted Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser to argue that if the PA lacks the funds to fight the coronavirus, it should stop paying salaries to terrorists .
Related reading: Palestinian Terror Payments: Pay to Slay
Another facet to the story of interest to American readers, but omitted from the coverage is the Taylor Force Act. This was passed by Congress and signed into law following the murder of Taylor Force, a 28-year-old US army veteran and Vanderbilt U. graduate student killed in a 2016 Palestinian stabbing rampage in Jaffa. Eleven other people injured in the indiscriminate attack including a pregnant woman, an Arab Israeli, and a Palestinian illegally residing in Israel.
The Wall Street Journal reported that relatives of Bashar Masalha, the Palestinian terrorist killed by responding police officers, “now receive monthly payments equal to several times the average Palestinian wage.”
Australia and the Netherlands similarly cut back aid in protest against the stipends.
HonestReporting director Daniel Pomerantz debated with PLO executive committee member Mustafa Barghouti.
Context provides a frame of reference for us to make sense of the news. A lack of background information distorts our ability to understand and critically judge developments like this.
It’s important that the media convey the full context behind important stories.
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