Defence Minister signs order confiscating ‘Pay-For-Slay’ stipends from Israeli-Arab terrorists
Israeli Defence Minister Naftali Bennett yesterday signed an order to confiscate the monthly stipends paid by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to convicted terrorists with Israeli citizenship and their families.
Naftali Bennett Photo by Hillel Maeir/TPS on 2 January, 2017
The PA has a policy of paying the families of convicted terrorists imprisoned in Israel, including Arabs with Israeli citizenship. The payments have been criticized as a financial incentive to commit terrorist attacks against Israelis.
Bennett said he plans to use all the legal tools at his disposal to prevent the PA’s payments from reaching the terrorists.
“We have moved to actions. This is another step in the campaign against terrorists. We are working so that Jewish blood will no longer be profitable,” he said.
According to a statement by the Ministry of Defense, this is the first time that such a measure has been taken against the financial support given to Israeli-Arab terrorists by the PA.
The order targets eight terrorists serving sentences in Israeli prisons for attacks that killed dozens of Israelis. Among them is Mufak Naif Hassan Ayrok, who led a terror attack in Tel Aviv’s old central bus station, killing 23 people. Five of the terrorists targeted by the order are serving life sentences.
The Ministry of Defence said that more terrorists who receive the stipends, dubbed “pay-for-slay,” would be targeted in the future.
The order was signed after work led by the National Counter-Terrorism office in the Ministry of Defence, in cooperation with the Israel Security Agency (ISA), the Israel Police, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), and the Anti-Money Laundering Authority.
The PA has been paying monthly salaries to convicted terrorists imprisoned in Israel since its establishment. The payments are made to the terrorists after being imprisoned for their participation in terror activity.
According to the PA’s pay scale, the salary of an imprisoned terrorist begins at NIS 1,400 ($401) every month from his first day in prison, and gradually rises to NIS 12,000 ($3,435), in accordance with the amount of time he has been in prison. Therefore, the more severe the attack was, the higher the stipend the terrorist is set to receive.
Terrorist prisoners who are married, have children or are Israeli citizens or residents of eastern Jerusalem receive a special addition to the base salary.
Two weeks ago, Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit submitted a position paper to the National Labor Court (NLC) in which he said the court should view payments from the PA to terrorists’ families as income.
Based on Mandelblit’s position, Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli watchdog, said on Tuesday that the Israeli government should collect taxes on the PA funds paid to Israeli-Arab terrorists and their families, which amount to millions of shekels every year.
