Terror victims urge deduction of terrorists’ salaries from Palestinian Authority tax funds
Hundreds of families of terror victims have urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deduct the salaries that the Palestinian Authority (PA) pays terrorists and their families from PA tax funds collected by Israel.
In July 2017, the ZAKA volunteer emergency response group cleans up the scene of the deadly Palestinian terror attack at the Salomon family home in Halamish. Credit: Yehezkiel Itkin/ZAKA.
Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, a mechanism was set up through which Israel collects taxes—value added tax and customs fees—on behalf of the PA to the tune of about $100 million per month. Israel then transfers the money to the PA.
The PA uses a considerable portion of these funds to finance the stipends it pays to terrorists and their families. In 2016, for example, these payments amounted to $334 million, or 7 percent of the PA’s total budget for salaries and about 20 percent of the foreign aid it received.
On Sunday, some 200 bereaved families sent a letter to Netanyahu, urging him to push through legislation that would deduct hundreds of millions in tax funds transferred to the Palestinians, essentially biting into the payments made to terrorists and their families.
The so-called “terrorist wages bill,” sponsored by Member of Knesset Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid), passed its preliminary Knesset reading in June 2017 and was up for its first reading last November, but the vote was postponed at the request of the Israeli Defense Ministry and Israel’s National Security Council, which sought to further explore its implications.
Stern said at the time that the bill was “critical for Israel’s national security and the war on terror.” The PA’s terror stipend system, he said, “not only incites, it’s an incentive to carry out terrorist attacks. The PA is essentially condoning the murder of Israelis and we have to put an end to it.”
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS)
Surely there has to be a way of removing incentives to kill innocent civilians.
It would make more sense if there were an additional punitive charge withheld from these tax payments as well.
The Palestinian Authorities must be laughing all the way to the bank as they collect these funds.
When Palestine is governing itself in a free environment the killing of Israelis and Palestinians will stop.
Its time Israelis stopped electing right wing regimes that are unproductive and irrational and elect a sensible PM and government party.
What do you see as “rational and productive” about the present situation of indiscriminate killing of Jewish civilians Adrian?