PA PM: PA will pay full salaries of terrorists and their families by order of Abbas; PA employees get 60%
Headline: "The [PA] government emphasizes adherence to the refusal to accept the reduced tax money and blesses the public employees’ resolve"
"[PA] Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh declared during a [PA] government meeting held yesterday [May 27, 2019] in Ramallah that the government – despite the financial crisis and by order of [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas – will pay the full salaries (rawatib) of the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners, 60% of the public employees' salaries for May – according to the same criteria in [both] the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the full salary of those who make 2,000 [Israeli] shekels or less in the West Bank and also in the Gaza Strip.
The prime minister emphasized 'the position of the [PA] leadership that refuses to accept our money from Israel if it is reduced, and the rejection of the description of our sons who are in the Israeli prisons as terrorists, or of us as funding terror (referring to the Israeli Anti "Pay-for-Slay" Law to deduct terrorist salaries; see note below –Ed.)."
Israel's Anti "Pay-for-Slay" Law - Israeli law stating that the PA payments to terrorists and the families of dead terrorists is a financial incentive to terror. The law instructs the state to deduct and freeze the amount of money the PA pays in salaries to imprisoned terrorists and families of "Martyrs" from the tax money Israel collects for the PA. Should the PA stop these payments for a full year, the Israeli government would have the option of giving all or part of the frozen money to the PA. The law was enacted by the Israeli Parliament on July 2, 2018. During the parliamentary vote, the law's sponsor Avi Dichter said: “The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee received much help in its deliberations... from Palestinian Media Watch who provided us with authentic data that enabled productive and professional deliberations, nuances that are very difficult to achieve without precise data.” [Israeli Parliament website, July 2, 2018] In accordance with the law, as of September 2021 Israel’s Security Cabinet had ordered the freeze of 1.857 billion shekels ($580.15 million) - the sum equivalent to the PA payments to terrorists in 2018, 2019, and 2020.