The government of Israel will once again freeze part of the funds it transfers to the Palestinian Authority due to the PA’s continued policy of paying monthly stipends to terrorists and their families, Finance Minister Israel Katz’s office said Monday.
“The policy is clear: to deduct from the PA’s funds the equivalent of its support transferred to terrorists and the families of terrorists who committed acts of terrorism against Jews,” Katz said in a press release.
“There is no plan to change this policy, which is based on Israeli and American law,” he said.
Katz’s statement is a reversal of former finance minister Moshe Kahlon’s decision in May to give the Palestinians an NIS 800 million loan that effectively returned all the tax and tariff funds Israel deducted since the Knesset passed the Pay for Slay Law in 2018.
That law requires the government to deduct the funds the PA pays terrorists and their families each month from their taxes and tariffs. The Defense Ministry must present a report on the PA’s terrorist salaries each year, which totaled NIS 517.4m. in 2019.
The PA in May decided to stop accepting money collected by Israel in anticipation of Israel applying sovereignty to parts of the West Bank in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s peace plan. As such, the deductions are not currently relevant, but there have been reports in recent weeks that they plan to take the funds again.
All imports to the PA go through Israeli checkpoints, and Israel collects VAT and tariffs for the PA, as per the Oslo Accords. Those funds are the largest source of income for the PA. Israel also collects income tax and health-insurance funds for Palestinians who work for Israelis.
Katz’s response came after Palestinian Media Watch sent all members of the security cabinet a letter calling on them “to act for the immediate implementation” of the Pay for Slay Law.
The law was first implemented in early 2019, deducting a total of NIS 651m. that year based on PA payments to terrorists in 2018, PMW director Itamar Marcus and PMW head of legal strategies Maurice Hirsch said in a press release.
The Defense Ministry submitted a report on the PA’s payments in 2019, but the security cabinet did not discuss it as of August of this year, Marcus and Hirsch wrote. The cabinet was too busy with matters related to the COVID-19 pandemic to discuss the report, the government told the High Court of Justice on October 29.
They also demonstrated that the PA does not intend to change its “pay for slay” policy with a quote from Palestinian Prisoners’ Authority director Kadri Abu Bacher, who on October 26 said: “If we agree to the deduction of these funds, the meaning is that we agree that these are really terrorists – murderers as Israel calls them.”
Despite the PA’s refuse to receive the tax money Israel collects for it, Marcus and Hirsch called on the government to discuss the 2019 report to be prepared for when the PA changes its mind.
“Avoiding implementation of the law can be understood by the PA as a weakness that expresses agreement that these are not terrorists but lawful fighters,” they wrote.
The 2020 report will be prepared after the year-end, the Defense Ministry said, without elaborating.