Abbas complains Israel deducted terrorist salaries, deduction is 70% of PA budget, employees paid only 50%
Official PA TV broadcast of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ speech before a visiting delegation of Harvard University students in Ramallah on March 23, 2019
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: “Recently, [the Israelis] deducted 182 million shekels (sic., 502,967,000 shekels) from us without us knowing how, why, and on what basis (sic., refers to Israeli Anti “Pay-for-Slay” Law to deduct terrorist salaries; see note below). We said: ‘Leave all the money with you, we don’t want it. Or let it all be paid to us and then we will sit and settle accounts – this is yours, this is mine. I have debts to you, I confirm it! I have [debts] to you, but at least you need to let me know what this money is.’ Amidst all this money that [Israel] has deducted – also a new [matter] – are the salaries (rawatib) that we pay the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners. [Israel] said: ‘These are criminals, these are murderers. You can’t pay them, and therefore I’m deducting this money from you.’ In other words, this is an act of thuggery – thuggery that is unacceptable to us, and therefore we returned the money to them and told them: ‘Until you treat us as equals, we are suffering greatly from the loss of a large portion of money equaling 70% of our budget. This month we were forced to pay just 50% of the [public] employees’ salaries, and perhaps next month – if the problem is not resolved – 40%, and so on and so forth, until in the end we will be left without a way to fund the country, the institutions, and the employees. The reason for this is the State of Israel.”