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The Palestinians Should Support Greenblatt, Who's Telling Them the Truth
(JNS-Algemeiner) Sander Gerber - At a closed-door UN Security Council Meeting on March 8, 2019, U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt condemned the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s continued support for financial payments that incentivize and reward terrorism, known as "pay to slay." He said: "The Palestinian Authority's institutionalization of support for terrorism is unacceptable and must be called out" [emphasis in original]. The PA's refusal to end these programs, coupled with subsequent funding cuts by the U.S. and Israel, have plunged the PA into a self-manufactured fiscal crisis. In response, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat penned an op-ed in Ha'aretz claiming that the payments were social welfare. However, in reality, the maximum PA welfare-system payment is only $168 a month, or 57% less than the minimum of $392 a month that the PA pays prisoners and relatives of "martyrs." The writer is a Fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.