The Israeli government tried to circumvent the economic collapse of the PA government by transferring NIS 660 million to the Palestinian Authority without the latter's knowledge, Israel's Kan television reported.
The channel said that Israel hoped the move would solve the PA's economic problems. However, after several days, the Authority asked the banks to return the money to Israel, and it was actually returned to Israel.
Someone has to say it: THIS IS ALL INSANE. The cash-strapped PA refuses to accept the 94% or so of the money Israel owes it - because it wants to maintain the sacred right of being allowed to pay terrorists and their families.
He is saying that paying terrorists is the top priority of the Palestinian Authority, higher than any other budget item. People who work for the PA are living on half-salaries or worse but the people who tried to or succeeded in killing Jews continue to receive their stipends.
That isn't even the most unbelievable part.
Somehow, the West is not outraged at this immoral gang who is running the PLO and the PA who are so eager and proud to use their own people as pawns. Journalists and diplomats are acting as if the PA has every right to demand that they must pay terrorists and that they can hold the rest of their own people hostage to assert that right!
To add to the insanity, the US and Arab countries are trying to put together a mechanism where tens of billions of dollars can be given to the PLO - the organization that has said quite plainly that rewarding terror is its #1 priority - to provide jobs and dignity to the Palestinian Arab people, and the PLO is refusing to even discuss it.
Who is paying the price? Ordinary Palestinian Arabs.
Who is on the people's side? By any measure, Israel and the US and the Gulf States care more about them than their own leaders do.
Israel is going out of its way to pay those who are saying plainly that they worship people who have killed Israelis.
Reporters and pundits and diplomats are more interested in disparaging the US (=Trump) for attempting to actually help Palestinians - something with no political downside for the Palestinian leadership, because they would not be obliged to accept any dictates on "return" or Jerusalem or "settlements" or their other key demands.
People are trying to throw money at the Palestinians, money that they desperately need, they are proud of refusing it - and the enlightened Western liberals and leftists who pretend to care about Palestinians are applauding them for their principled position to reward terrorists above all else.
Not one Arab or Western leader is willing to publicly say that the PLO is acting like a bunch of crybabies whose bizarrely misplaced idea of "dignity" is to punish their own people and beg for money from other Arab countries and the international community - as long as they don't attach any conditions to the billions the Palestinians pretend they deserve.
If a Hollywood scriptwriter would write such a story as farce, it would be rejected for being too far fetched.