Even as Israel continues cooperating with the Palestinian Authority amid its refusal to abandon its "pay-for-slay" policy that compensates terrorists and their relatives, the US Congress has not been so easy to acquiesce.
Rep. Doug Lamborn from Colorado has asked US President Donald Trump to impose personal sanctions on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other senior PA officials.
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In his letter to Trump, Lamborn said that despite international criticism, Abbas has refused to cease paying terrorists' salaries.
"For years, tens of thousands of jailed terrorists and the relatives of terrorists killed while committing acts of terror, have received thousands of dollars every month," Lamborn said. "The stipend for acts of mass murder of innocent civilians, people, women, and children, is $3,500 per month."
Therefore, wrote Lamborn, the US government should impose personal punitive measures that will deter other senior PA officials from implementing this policy.
In his years in the White House, Trump has taken a tough stance against the Palestinian Authority, going so far as to shut the PLO mission in Washington.
In Israel, meanwhile, there is tacit approval for the PA's payments to terrorists to continue. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not presented to the cabinet a report prepared by the defense and security establishment in 2019 on terrorist "salaries" paid out by the PA.
As a result, the sums paid out by the PA to terrorists and their families were not deducted from the tax money Israel collects on behalf of the PA. Netanyahu even punished MK Avi Dichter (Likud), who authored a law that would deduct an amount equivalent to what the PA pays terrorists and their families from the tax revenue Israel collects, and prevented him from becoming a minister in the current government.
Netanyahu and former Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and former Defense Minister Naftali Bennett also provided an 800 million-shekel ($235 million) loan to the PA, explaining that without the money, the PA could face economic collapse.
In addition, Defense Minister Benny Gantz cancelled policy that instated under Bennett, under which the money the PA paid out to terrorists was impounded from Palestinian banks.
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