Cash rewards for murdering Israeli children: Over $371,000 paid by the PA for murder of 4 children and 9 adults
Today is the 18th anniversary of the brutal murder of young mother and her 2 children aged 4 and 5
The PA has paid the terrorist responsible for the murder of 13 Israelis, including 4 children, no less than 892,200 shekels ($264,358/€222,630)
The PA has paid each of the families of two dead terrorists involved in these murders almost 200,000 shekels
The PA views terrorist murderers as its “soldiers” and as the “best” of the Palestinian people
Today is the 18th anniversary of the brutal murder of five Israelis in Kibbutz Metzer on November 10, 2002. Among those murdered were Revital Ohayun and her two infant children, five-year-old Matan and four-year-old Noam.
The attack itself was carried out by Palestinian terrorist Sarhan Sarhan. Sarhan was sent to carry out the attack by Muhammad Naifeh ‘Abu Rabia’, a terrorist who is a member of Abbas’ Fatah party.
The attack in Kibbutz Metzer was not the first attack ordered by Naifeh. Just 11 days prior, on Oct. 30, 2002, another terrorist, Tarek Abu Safaqa, carried out a similar attack in the Israeli town of Hirmesh. Abu Safaqa was also sent by Naifeh. Among those murdered were Linoy Sarusi and Haddas Turgeman, both 14 years old.
Naifeh was convicted for his involvement in these and other attacks and was sentenced to 13 consecutive life sentences. Abu Safaqa was killed while trying to flee the scene of the Hirmesh attack. Sarhan was killed in a gun battle with Israeli security forces sent to arrest him in October 2003.
Instead of denouncing the imprisoned and dead terrorists (in PA terminology so-called ”Martyrs”) and their actions, the PA leadership see them as the PA’s soldiers, who are the “best” of the Palestinian people.
As the head of the PA-funded Commission for Prisoners’ Affairs, Qadri Abu Bakr, made clear:
“These Martyrs and prisoners are the best of our people.”
[Official PA TV, Oct. 26, 2020]
Referring to the imprisoned and dead terrorists as “soldiers” of the PA, Deputy PA Prime Minister and spokesman for the PA Chairman, Nabil Abu Rudeina, argued that Israel has no reason to object to the PA payments because the PA owes this to them because they were acting on PA orders:
“It is impossible to send a soldier to war and then not take care of his family. We are talking about someone who acts on our behalf and receives orders from us.”
[Kan (Israel), April 16, 2019]
Rejecting the demand that the PA stop rewarding the terrorists, PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh argued:
“If we agree, there will be a political consequence for our children in the prisons, in the sense that we agree that they committed an act of terror, and we will not agree to this… If we agree to this, the PA will be subject to lawsuits in the Israeli, international, and American courts for funding terror. If we agree to this, we are paying the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners through the banks; therefore Israel or whoever represents it can sue all the Palestinian banks in the courts.”
[Official PA TV, Oct. 26, 2020]
Referring to Israel’s Anti Pay-for-Slay Law, which requires that Israel deduct a sum equivalent to the PA’s annul expenditure on terror rewards from the tax income Israel gathers and transfers to the PA, Abu Bakr added:
“If we agree to the deducting of this money (i.e., sum equivalent to PA terror salaries), it means that we agree that they are truly a group of terrorists – murderers, as Israel calls them. We would be defining their struggle as a crime, and defining as a crime our people’s struggles for more than 50 years of struggle.”
[Official PA TV, Oct. 26, 2020]
As part of the terror reward policy, often dubbed as the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay policy,” the PA pays, inter alia, monthly salaries to imprisoned terrorists and allowances to the families of dead terrorists.
The payment of the salaries to the terrorist prisoners is enshrined in the PA’s 2004 Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners.
The current PA pay scale for the terrorist prisoners was set in 2010 by Abbas.
Since his arrest in November 2002, the PA has paid Naifeh no less than 892,200 shekels ($264,358/€222,630) in reward for being a mass murderer. Every month, the PA pays him another 7,400 shekels (7,000 basic salary plus additions for being married with 2 children). As he spends more time in prison, the salary the PA pays to Naifeh grows and will eventually reach 12,400 shekels per month – a salary equivalent to that of a Minister in the PA government.
The monthly allowances to the families of dead terrorists are paid by the PLO Institute for the Martyrs and the Wounded, which receives its entire budget from the PA. The pay scale for the allowances paid to the families of the dead terrorists was set by Abbas in 2013.
As a reward for murdering Jews, the PA has paid the family of “Martyr” Abu Safaqa 199,000 shekels ($58,963/€49,656), while the family of “Martyr” Sarhan has been paid 197,600 shekels ($58,548/€49,306).
The 2018 Taylor Force Act made all US direct aid to the Palestinian Authority conditional on the abolition of the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” policy. Taylor Force was a WestPoint graduate who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. While walking along the beach in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, Taylor was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist. The family of Taylor’s murderer “Martyr” is the recipient of the PA’s cash rewards.
US Vice President elect, Kamala Harris, has declared that the Biden Administration will take steps to renew US aid to the PA. One wonders whether President elect Biden will indeed agree that US aid again be misused by the PA to reward terrorist murderers - including the murderers of US citizens and US military veterans like Taylor Force.
The following are longer excerpts of the statements cited above:
Official PA TV, broadcast of documentary film “If One Penny Was Left”
Economic analyst Samir Huleileh: “Currently the specific [economic] crisis that happened to us is a crisis whose cause is that Israel claimed – as if it discovered for the first time – that there is money being paid by the Palestinian [PA] government or the PLO to the relatives of the Martyrs, the prisoners, and also the wounded from the government’s budget, the PA’s budget, even though this was done [already] before 1994 and after 1994.”
Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs Qadri Abu Bakr: “As the Palestinian revolution, we have been paying salaries to [the prisoners] for more than 53 years already, since the launch of the revolution.”
…PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh: “We are paying the price of this position that was outlined by [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas when he rejected the deal of the century (i.e., US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan). After all, what is the monetary crisis? It is punishment for our rejection of the deal of the century (sic., the PA economic crisis was caused by its refusal to receive tax money following Israel’s Anti “Pay-for-Slay” Law to deduct PA terror salaries; see note below).”
…PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: “The issue of the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners is at the top of our list of priorities, and any amount [of money] we have will be earmarked for them.”
…Qadri Abu Bakr: “These Martyrs and prisoners are the best of our people, as [former PLO Chairman and PA President] brother Yasser Arafat described them, and they are the pioneers of the people and freedom fighters…
If we agree to the deducting of this money (i.e., sum equivalent to PA terror salaries), it means that we agree that they are truly a group of terrorists – murderers, as Israel calls them. We would be defining their struggle as a crime, and defining as a crime our people’s struggles for more than 50 years of struggle.”Muhammad Shtayyeh: “If we agree, there will be a political consequence for our children in the prisons, in the sense that we agree that they committed an act of terror, and we will not agree to this…
If we agree to this, the PA will be subject to lawsuits in the Israeli, international, and American courts for funding terror. If we agree to this, we are paying the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners through the banks; therefore Israel or whoever represents it can sue all the Palestinian banks in the courts.”[Official PA TV, Oct. 26, 2020]
The Trump peace plan – US President Donald Trump announced his Israel–Palestinian peace plan "Peace to Prosperity" – commonly known as “the deal of the century” - on Jan. 28, 2020. Main points of the plan: 1- Israeli sovereignty would be applied to the Jordan Valley and all Israeli towns and cities in the West Bank. 2- Jerusalem, including all its holy sites, would remain under Israeli sovereignty with accommodations made to enable access for Palestinians. 3- The remainder of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and part of what is currently Israeli land in the Negev, the Galilee, and Jerusalem - creating a territory almost equal in size to the West Bank and Gaza Strip - would form the Palestinian state, with its capital in neighborhoods in East Jerusalem that are outside of Israel's security wall. 4- The Palestinian state would be demilitarized, with Israel responsible for external security and controlling all airspace. 5- All Palestinian prisoners except murderers, and those who attempted or conspired to murder would be released. 6- Palestinians in refugee camps would be absorbed into their host countries and, subject to certain limitations, into the Palestinian state. 7- Before becoming a state, the Palestinians would have to carry out extensive reform of their laws and institutions, including implementing a new governing system; granting its people due process and basic human rights and freedoms; end all incitement to and incentivizing of terror; end all glorification of terror and martyrdom; disarm Hamas; and adopt a culture promoting peace. The goal of the plan is to create a Palestinian state beside Israel, living in peace and security. The implementation would be facilitated through extensive international investment.
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.
Yasser Arafat – Founder of Fatah and former chairman of the PLO and PA. During the 1960s, 70s and 80s Arafat was behind numerous terror attacks against Israelis. Although he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 together with then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and then Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres “for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East" after signing the Oslo Accords peace agreement, Arafat launched a 5-year terror campaign - the second Intifada (2000-2005) – in which more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered. Arafat died of an illness in 2004.
Muhammad Naifeh ‘Abu Rabia’ – Palestinian terrorist and Tanzim member serving 13 life sentences for his involvement in several terror attacks: the murder of 5 Israelis at Kibbutz Metzer on Nov. 11, 2002, the murder of 3 Israelis in Hermesh on Oct. 29, 2002 and the murder of 5 others in shooting attacks in 2001. Naifeh carried out some of the shooting attacks himself. Naifeh is serving 13 life sentences.