PA PM: Dispute with Israel over terror salaries will lead to weakening of security forces
Headline: "Shtayyeh: Trump's economic path is detached from reality"
"[PA] Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh… said to Reuters yesterday [June 27, 2019]… that the tax dispute with Israel (i.e., referring to Israel's Anti "Pay-for-Slay" Law to deduct terror salaries; see note below) has caused a worsening of the current financial crisis.
He said that the deficit was one of the reasons that forced the PA to give the public employees [only] half of their salaries. He warned that this situation is liable to lead to the weakening of the [PA] Security Forces soon. Shtayyeh wondered: 'Will we be able to continue in this condition? I am not sure. If the policemen do not have gas in their cars, they will not be able to maintain law and order in the streets, and herein lies the problem.'"
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.