The Palestinian Authority has been under pressure from international donors following Palestinian Media Watch's exposure of the PA's policy of rewarding terrorists with salaries. These salaries amounted to a total of $103 million in 2013 and will reach at least $130 million in 2014. Members of US Congress have recently suggested deducting the amount paid in salaries from US funding to the PA. Similarly, Norway and Britainhave been demanding clarifications and changes to their funding of the PA, and the Dutch Parliament passed a motion that its government must do something to stop the salaries.
In order to avoid this international pressure, the PA is planning a ploy to maintain the salaries but transfer responsibility for payments from the PA to the PLO. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is also the head of the PLO and he will continue to be directly responsible for the payments to the prisoners. (See below)
The PA expects that this ploy will work. The PA daily Al-Ayyam reported that "well-informed sources" stated that "turning the Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs into an authority subordinate to the PLO" "would be a change of name and nothing more, which would in no way affect the roles and duties that the Ministry [of Prisoners' Affairs] fulfilled." [Al-Ayyam, June 1, 2014] Accordingly, US and European donor money will continue to flow to the PA, the PA will pass the money to the PLO, and the PLO will pay the salaries of the terrorists.Palestinian sources specified that this move was in response to US and EU pressure not to pay salaries to terrorists with their donor money.
"The new situation would make possible the provision of new resources to support prisoners' issues, without allowing forces of the US Congress or some European parliaments to attempt to blackmail the PA or to take steps against it.' Furthermore, these sources predicted that prisoners "would not feel any change," but rather improvement of their situation would be the case, as the PA would be able "to act towards meeting their demands and defending their rights more efficiently and flexibly."[Al-Ayyam, June 1, 2014]
PMW reported last week on what the PA daily calls "forces of the US Congress," who are against paying salaries to terrorists. During the testimony by Assistant Secretary of State, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson at a congressional Subcommittee Hearing, Congressman Weber asked:
"If the PA is paying for terrorists in prison, we ought to also be willing to hit them with some economic sanctions of that sort?"
Assistant Secretary Patterson answered:
"Frankly, I know that they're going to try and phase that out and we should give them an opportunity to do so." [House Committee on Foreign Affairs' website, April 29, 2014]
At the time, PMW wrote that the PA had never indicated that they would cut back payments to terrorists, and that in fact the payments were increasing in 2014. There had been no evidence of what Assistant Secretary Patterson referred to as the PA "phasing out" their salary payments to terrorists. It may be that this PA ploy - to keep the benefits and salaries at the same level but bypass Congressional pressure by moving it to the PLO - is what the PA presented to Patterson as a "phasing out" of the salary program.Official PA sources confirmed that the purpose is to avoid pressure from donor countries who don't want to fund terrorists, and they stressed that the change is only cosmetic. PA Deputy Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Ziyad Abu Ein explained on PA TV that the massive funding of prisoners has been increased by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and that the money for prisoners under the PLO will also be administered by Abbas:
"Who else has elevated the cause of the Palestinian prisoners other than President Mahmoud Abbas? All the laws, the tenfold increase of the budget of the Ministry of Prisoners' [Affairs] - [all this] was done during the tenure of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and according to the wishes of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas...
If we go back to the source, which is the PLO, which will take care of the [prisoner] issue... we eliminate the international pressure and the attempts to tamper with this issue, so sensitive and holy to our Palestinian people. The [Palestinian] leadership wants to keep this holy issue away from the influence of the donor countries, the interference of the donor countries, and the occasional negative influence of the donor countries, by giving it [the prisoner issue] its holiness and assigning it to the leadership of the struggle of our Palestinian people. Who is the leadership of the struggle of our Palestinian people? The PLO... All the authority, all the laws, the budget, the officials and staff will be a part of the Prisoners and Released Prisoners' Authority, which will belong to the PLO, to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and to the Executive Committee of the PLO."
[Official PA TV, June 1, 2014]
Since the PA's budget is pretty opaque, the question is how much of the PLO budget comes from donor dollars earmarked for the PA. Originally, the PLO was funded exclusively by Arab and Muslim countries, but it has transferred many of its responsibilities to the PA which now gets funded by credulous Western governments who turn a blind eye to its support for terror. Chances are very good that now the Western donor dollars are being laundered back through the PA to the PLO. Since no one is talking about a budget windfall from removing $130 million from the PA annual budget. it seems pretty clear that there is no new source for the money to support terrorists and their families.