ISRAEL: UPPING THE ANTE ON PALESTINIAN PAY-FOR-SLAY TERRORISM
BY HUGH FITZGERALD
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research
purposes:
The Israeli government has begun to react to the terrorist murders by inflicting some mild economic pain on the Palestinian Authority, but it is hardly enough.Israel collects taxes on all the goods that arrive in the country for delivery to the Palestinian Authority, and then transfers, with its usual scrupulosity, those taxes to the Palestinian Authority. In March 2018, President Trump signed into law the Taylor Force Act, which withheld all American economic aid to the Palestinian Authority as long as it continued to pay stipends to imprisoned terrorists, or to the families of terrorists who were killed. On July 2, 2018, the Knesset followed suit, and passed by a vote of 87 to 15 (with the far-left Meretz Party and the Arab MKs naturally opposed) its own “Pay For Slay” bill. By its terms, the Israeli government is to withhold from the amount of taxes it transfers the exact amount that the Palestinian Authority provides either to imprisoned terrorists or to the families of dead terrorists.For some reason, the Israeli government did not immediately implement the bill, but began to do so in February 2019. The family of Khalil Yusef Ali Jabarin, the terrorist who murdered an Israeli named Ari Fuld, a 45-year-old father of four, stabbing him in the back, will receive NIS (New Israeli Shekels) 1,400, or $400 a month, for the next three years, from the Palestinian Authority, as part of its policy of funding what they call “martyrs” for the Palestinian cause. Withholding that sum — $400 a month — from the PA is not going to have the slightest effect on discouraging terrorist murder. Israel needs to cause real economic pain both to the PA, which incites such terrorism, and to the families of terrorists. The PA’s terror-reward budget for 2017 and 2018 amounted to NIS 1.2 billion, or $336 million, for each year, according to its Finance Ministry’s website. $4800 less, in a total pay-for-slay budget of $336 million, is a derisory amount.The Israelis have to adopt a very different mindset. They could, for example, charge the PA for the full cost, running into millions of dollars, of collecting and transferring those taxes. Instead of a deduction in the taxes transferred equal to the amount given to the family of Khalil Jabarin, they could decide to withhold ten, or fifty, or a hundred times, the amount that his family will receive from the PA. That should get the attention of Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinians are already reeling from the ending of all economic aid to the PA from the United States, the ending of American aid to UNRWA, and the closing of the PLO office in Washington. They will whine and complain no matter how little or how much is withheld by the Israelis, so why not provide the PA with something to really harm them economically, while reminding the world that even if these measures hurt, they are as nothing compared to the anguish felt by the families of Ari Fuld and other victims of “Palestinian” terror.While Mahmoud Abbas is loudly proclaiming to the world the damage this new Israeli policy will cause the “impoverished Palestinians,” Prime Minister Netanyahu might suggest before the cameras of the world that Mahmoud Abbas and his two “businessman” sons could easily make up for these steeper cuts in the tax revenues by contributing to the PA part — “giving something back” in the literal sense — of the $400 million fortune they have somehow managed to accumulate. That fortune is a very sore point among many “Palestinians” who despise the Abbas family’s corruption, and Netanyahu’s remarks will find favor among them, and leave Abbas speechless with impotent rage.When there is another terrorist attack, and another promise by the PA to pay the terrorist or his family, the Israelis should again increase the amounts to be withheld. Not 100 times, but 200 times the amount given by the PA to the terrorist (if alive), or to his family (if he is dead), ought now to be withheld, with the threat that, with each subsequent terrorist attack, and commitment by the PA to pay that terrorist stipend, there will again be a doubling of the amount of taxes withheld by Israel. When the Pay-For-Slay program stops, then the deductions from taxes transferred will also stop. It’s a very simple calculation. How much economic pain can the PA take?
