Since 2011, Palestinian Media Watch has been supplying governments and media worldwide with documentation that the PA pays high monthly salaries to Palestinians imprisoned in Israel for security offenses, including terrorists serving multiple life-sentences for murder.
Yet for nearly two years, the British and Norwegian Foreign Ministries have told their MPs that PMW's documentation was incorrect. They argued that the PA does not pay salaries to security prisoners, which would be a reward for terror, but gives "social aid to the families" like other PA social welfare programs. This, they have now explained, was what the PA assured them.
In spite of all PMW's documentation, Norway and the UK have justified their continued funding of the PA, saying that none of their support money was going into a funding program specifically for terrorists, but was going to the wives and children. (See quotes below.)
PMW is now releasing a recent interview with a wife of a Palestinian prisoner that verifies the accuracy of PMW's reports. In the interview, the prisoner's wife and mother of five children complains repeatedly that the prisoner, her husband, has not given her and their children control of his salary, but instead gave it to his brother.
The Palestinian Ministry of Prisoner Affairs consistently calls the money it sends to prisoners "salaries" or "wages," not "aid" or "support" or anything that would indicate that it is a social welfare program. In addition to the salaries, however, they also provide some direct services to released terrorists, such as paying for their education, providing loans, offering trips to Mecca for the Hajj, free health insurance and vocational counseling.PA TV journalist Roba Al-Najjar to wife of prisoner: "For nearly four years, the prisoner's allowance from the Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs and the official institutions has not reached your hands and your children's hands... Did you try to turn to the authorities?"
Prisoner's wife: "A year and a half ago, I went to the Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs... Their answer was: 'Your husband transfers it to the person he wants. It's in his power not to transfer [it to you] and we can't do anything about it."
Prisoner's wife: "[My husband] told me: 'If you do what I want, it [the monthly salary] will return to you. As long as you are like this, it won't return to you.'"
According to the prisoner's wife, many other prisoners likewise don't give control of their salary payments to their wives:
Prisoner's wife: "It's not just me, this problem, many of the prisoners' wives and children suffer from it, from the transfer of his salary, the prisoner's salary."As is clear from the account of the prisoner's wife broadcast on PA TV and the response of the PA Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs, the payment is the prisoner's salary, is under his control, and is not a social welfare payment.
The West is funding all of this.