We will honor “our responsibility” to terrorist prisoners, “their salaries will reach them,” says PLO official

Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs Qadri Abu Bakr: “We aren’t relinquishing our responsibility towards the prisoners. President Abbas also announced that we won’t relinquish [it] and that their salaries will reach them. However, it should be done so that the prisoners will get their salaries with pride and dignity, like any other person... Of course, there need to be responses to this. It is not enough that we refuse, there needs to be categorical rejection [of this] in the Palestinian street, in the political and governmental arena… It is not enough to say “We oppose.” “We oppose.”

Posted text on Facebook page: “[Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs Qadri] Abu Bakr: We oppose any alternative to the banks in paying the prisoners’ salaries, and the alternative is to fight to defeat the occupation’s decision”

Israeli army legislation which applies parts of Israel's 2016 Anti-Terror Law to the West Bank (taking effect on May 9, 2020). The law prohibits numerous terror related offenses, including terror funding/rewarding and holds heads of terror organizations responsible for murder committed by members of the organization. The law criminalizes the provision of funds for or the payment of rewards for the commission of terrorist offenses, such as the salaries the PA pays to terrorist prisoners and released prisoners. The provision also applies to any person or body - such as a bank - that facilitates such funding or rewarding of terror offenses. Based on this last provision, PMW sent letters in April 2020 to the heads of banks in the PA areas warning them that they must freeze the accounts of terrorists and their proxies and transfer them to the Israeli army or face legal consequences.