Report: PA Halts Payments to 500 Released Terrorists

The Palestinian Authority has cut off payments to some 500 terrorists who were receiving a pension after being released from Israeli prisons, a Hamas report said. According to the report, the PA has halted the payments in response to the pressure by the United States on the transfer of payments to terrorists and their families, the report in the newspaper Falastin said.

Meanwhile, the terrorists and their families demonstrated in Ramallah this week over the halting of the payments. “There is a large budget allocated to the prisoners, but the PA has been cutting it,” the Falastin report said. “A new intifada, one led by the prisoners, could emerge from this.”

In June, reports said that the PA had agreed to stop paying salaries to the families of terrorists held in Israeli prisons, but the PA later said that this was not the case, denying contentions by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the Palestinian Authority had agreed to stop the payments. “There has not been and will not be a change in our policy,” said a senior Hamas official. “The salaries will continue to be paid,” the official told Channel Ten. “Stopping these payments would be the end of the Palestinian Authority. It would have major social and economic implications for many PA families.”