An article in Firas Press today mentions that Israel released a 15-year old who was caught with what appeared to be explosives at the Hawara checkpoint.
The story says that 15-year old Ra'fat Obeid from the Askar refugee camp south of Nablus had been carrying a number of small pipes filled with white flour. A friend convinced him to take this fake bomb and surrender himself at the checkpoint, allowing himself to get arrested and to go to prison.
The reason is that the moderate Palestinian Authority gives a monthly financial stipend to all detainees, no matter what crimes they might have done, and the boy was from a poor family and wanted to get a piece of the action.
Which means that the world is funding the PA which takes a significant amount of its budget to effectively pay salaries to anyone who gets arrested, from terrorists to kids who want a free education in Israeli prison. (A WashPo article from 2006 says that the amount is $220 a month per prisoner, so families with lots of sons in prison can stand to make a pretty penny.)
And apparently this is acceptable to the European and American auditors of the PA budget.
