PA MP defends terror salaries following her release from prison
Headline: "Jarrar at the moment of her release: The female prisoners of Damon Prison suffer from harsh conditions and have no privacy"
"At the moment of her release [on Feb. 28, 2019] at the Salem checkpoint west of Jenin, in a special interview with [the official PA news agency] WAFA… [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine member]Khalida Jarrar condemned the theft and robbery of our Palestinian people's money that the occupation authorities committed(referring to implementation of the Israeli Anti "Pay-for-Slay" Law to deduct terror salaries; see note below –Ed.) as an attempt to pressure the [Palestinian] leadership to relinquish our basic national principles, and primarily the matter of the families of the Martyrs (Shahids) and the prisoners, which cannot be relinquished, as [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas and the leadership have emphasized."
Khalida Jarrar – Palestinian Authority MP arrested by Israeli authorities on April 12, 2015, for being a member of the terror organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), for inciting to kidnap Israeli soldiers and inciting to terror. On Dec. 6, 2015 she was sentenced to 15 months in prison, fined 10,000 shekels, and given an additional suspended sentence of 10 months for incitement to violence and belonging to the PFLP terror organization. Jarrar was released in June 2016 following an international campaign on her behalf. She was arrested again in July 2017 and is being held in administrative detention that was extended in December 2017, and again in June 2018. The reasons for her administrative detention have not been released. Jarrar was released from detention on Feb. 28, 2019.
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.