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Ending Palestinian "Pay to Slay" Payments for the Sake of Peace
(Jerusalem Post) MK Elazar Stern - In its 2018 budget, the Palestinian Authority allocated $360 million - 7% of the budget - to two institutions that reward convicted terrorists imprisoned in Israel, released terrorists, and families of terrorists. This massive funding indicates that while the PA ostensibly claims to seek peace, it is actually funding and incentivizing the machinery of violent rejectionism and ongoing conflict. While the PA claims the funds are directed to welfare needs, the World Bank has stated: "The program is clearly not targeted to the poorest households. The level of resources devoted to the Fund for Martyrs and the Injured does not seem justified from a welfare or fiscal perspective." Indeed, the funding does not go to those most in need from a socioeconomic point of view, but rather increases incrementally and macabrely by the amount of death and destruction a terrorist wreaks on Israeli citizens. The amount given to Palestinian terrorists is sometimes many times what they could receive as an average employee in the Palestinian territories. The Palestinian Authority is telling its people loudly and clearly that it really does pay to slay. This incentivization to kill, murder and maim is a primary obstacle to the chances for peace. The payments to terrorists provide the gas for the persistence of the conflict. Should our Palestinian neighbors genuinely seek peace in the future, the deducted funds could be rechanneled to the PA. Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Elazar Stern is the author of the law passed in the Knesset on Monday which offsets salaries paid by the PA to terrorists with tax money collected for the PA by Israel.