World Bank, IMF continue to avoid recommending the Palestinians stop Pay for Slay

Don't tell me how to spend the money the West sends me!

The International Monetary Fund visited Israel and the territories this month to give advice on helping the Palestinian economy.

They issued a final statement with a summary of their findings. But there was something missing:

A single word about the Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund or the other programs that pay terrorists and their families.

The PA spends about $270 million every year on prisoner salaries and "martyr" family payments, a significant chunk of the PA budget altogether (a few years ago, it was 8%, it has probably increased since then.) It is nearly 2% of the total Palestinian GDP! 

This is similar to the April World Bank report that also didn't mention "Pay for Slay" as a potential target for cost cutting.

Mahmoud Abbas has said many times that the top priority of spending for the Palestinians is on paying these terrorists - more than healthcare, more than education, more than retirement benefits. 

That appears to be the reason the IMF and World Bank don't bother making the recommendations to cut a program that throws hundreds of millions of dollars away annually to terrorists and their families - because they know that the PA will ignore them. But that is a profoundly bad reason - their job is to make the best recommendations they can, and then report if the PA refuses to comply. 

By hiding a huge source of the PA's financial woes, these world financial organizations are not doing anyone any favors. On the contrary - they become complicit in supporting terrorism. 

Say the truth, and let the PA defend the indefensible. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Why don't The World Bank and IMF ever recommend the PA end Pay to Slay?

On May 10, the World Bank issued a report on the economy of the Palestinian territories, with suggestions and ideas to help it make ends meet.

This follows a similar report by the International Monetary Fund at the end of April. 

Both of them mention, as an issue, that Israel is withholding some tax revenue corresponding to the PA's payments to terrorist prisoners, their families, and families of "martyrs" - the so-called "Pay for Slay" program.

For example, the IMF notes:

A significant part of the fiscal problem is structural. The PA raises virtually no revenue from Gaza and East Jerusalem, while in 2021 it spent about a third of its budget in these two areas— particularly in Gaza—mainly comprising civil servant salaries and pensions, and net lending. Neither does it raise any significant revenue from Area C in the West Bank. Furthermore, the PA and Israel disagree on the amounts that the Government of Israel should transfer to the PA under the Paris Protocol, the so-called “fiscal leakages” (estimated at about 2 percent of GDP annually). In addition, the PA disagrees with unilateral Israeli deductions from clearance revenue for so-called “prisoner payments” (which amounted to 1.3 percent of GDP in 2021).

So while both groups mention the prisoner payments, neither of them suggest that the PA end the program.

They give plenty of other advice to the PA on how to reduce expenses and increase revenue. For example, the IMF recommends:

The way out of the current fiscal crisis will require wide-ranging Palestinian policy actions. Staff discussed the benefits of adopting a broad-based strategy to contain and rebalance public spending, while boosting growth. As the Palestinian authorities have fewer policy tools compared to peers, systematic reform to the key drivers of non-discretionary spending—i.e., civil service salaries and benefits, transfer payments, the public pension scheme, the health care system, and fuel subsidies—are key.    

But neither they nor the World Bank ever say that if the PA would just stop paying terrorist salaries, then a significant chunk of cash would immediately become available to them. 

Instead, they recommend negotiations with Israel on the topic, as if this is an expense that the PA has every right to spend even when they are being lent Western money.

It is telling that the world refuses to publicly condemn "pay for slay." And even those who are espousing responsible financial policies for the PA refuse to mention that lots of money can be saved if terrorists aren't rewarded for trying to murder Jews. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Let's see how those anti-Israel boycotts are doing

From Globes:

The IMF has raised its growth outlook for Israel by 0.3 percentage points in a new World Economic Outlook report published today, on the eve of the World Bank Group and IMF 2007 Annual Meeting. ...It now predicts 4.8% growth in 2007, and 4.2% growth in 2008. The IMF’s growth forecast for Israel is one of the highest for developed countries; the IMF categorizes Israel as such. The IMF predicts higher growth rates in 2007 for Hong Kong and Singapore, at 5.5% each, and for Ireland, at 5%. It predicts 4.4% growth for South Korean, 2.9% growth for the UK, 2.3% for Japan, 2.2% for the US, and 1.8% for Germany. The IMF also predicts 0.1% deflation for Israel this year; the only developed country for which it predicts this. The IMF predicts that Israel’s unemployment rate will fall to 7.5% of the civilian labor force in 2007 and 7.2% in 2008, down from 9% in 2005 and 8.4% in 2006.

I've mentioned before how when Arab nations enforced a boycott against Palestinian Jews in 1946 it backfired spectacularly. One would think that they and their Jew-hating colleagues would learn by now.

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