How Palestinian Leaders Encourage Terrorism

Stand for Israel  |  April 24, 2019

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas pretend to be groups that represent the Palestinian people. That’s what they say. But reality is very, very different. Gatestone Institute’s Bassam Tawil presents the tragic reality — that Palestinian leaadership is more concerned with the well-being of terrorists who attack Israel than of the hard-working people they supposedly serve:

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas recently reaffirmed his longstanding commitment to pay families of Palestinians who were imprisoned for or killed during terrorist attacks against Israelis. “We have been paying the families of the prisoners and martyrs since 1965,” Abbas told Arab League Foreign Ministers during an emergency meeting in Cairo on April 21.

Abbas’s insistence on paying millions of dollars to families of Palestinians who murder or attempt to murder Jews, has cost the Palestinians a heavy price. In the past two months, Abbas’s government has been unable to pay full salaries to its 200,000 employees. The reason? Israel has begun deducting, from the tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians, the same amount the PA government pays each month to the families of the prisoners and “martyrs.”

Facing a sharp financial crisis, the PA government says it has been forced to pay its employees only 50%-60% of their salaries because Israel has been deducting the large sums of money that were supposed to go to the families of prisoners and terrorists who carried out attacks against Israelis…

In the past few months, Abbas has made explicit his list of priorities – and topping that list are would-be Jew killers. The families of the terrorists, Abbas has stated, should be the first to receive salaries from his government. These families, according to him, are entitled to be at the head of the line of those standing to receive their salaries.

On July 23, 2018, at a Ramallah ceremony honoring Palestinian terrorists, Abbas referred to the prisoners and “martyrs” as “pioneers” and “stars in the sky of the Palestinian people’s struggle who have a top priority in everything.” Abbas said:

“We will neither reduce nor withhold the allowances of the families of martyrs, prisoners, and released prisoners, as some want [us to do]; if we had one single penny left, we would spend it on the families of the martyrs and the prisoners.”

Abbas has been left with much more than a penny because Israel has been withholding only a small percentage of the tax and tariff revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians. Israel’s move is not aimed at punishing the entire Palestinian public as much as sending a message to Palestinian leaders to cease and desist from paying Palestinians to murder Jews…