Shai Maimon was seriously wounded in a shooting attack in mid-2015, as he was coming home from a basketball game in northern Judea and Samaria. His friend, Malachi Rosenfeld, was murdered in the attack.
After the perpetrators were caught, Maimon dug through the prosecution documents filed against them and learned that the terrorist who funded the attack was Ahmed Najar – a terrorist Maimon himself had arrested in 2003 as an officer and team leader in the Israeli army's special Egoz unit.
Najar was convicted and jailed for several life terms for the murders of Shuli Har-Melech, Gideon Lichtman and three IDF soldiers in Ein Yabrud, a Palestinian town near Ramallah. In 2011 he was released as part of the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange deal and was deported to the Gaza Strip and then from there to Jordan.
It was from Jordan that he orchestrated the murderous terrorist attack that killed Maimon's friend. Where did this terrorist get the money to fund the murder? From the salary he received during his time as a prisoner from the Palestinian Authority, a salary he still receives today as a former prisoner.
The phenomenon of funding murderers can be stopped through legislation. U.S. President Donald Trump understands this, and he sternly spoke about it with PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The U.S. Congress is in advanced stages of ratifying the proposed Taylor Force Act, which aims to withhold U.S. funding from the PA as long as it continues to fund terrorists.
Taylor Force, the namesake of the bill, was a U.S. Army veteran and tourist to Israel who was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist from Qalqilya who went on a stabbing spree in Jaffa in 2016.
But what about us? The Israeli government transfers great sums of money to the PA, which in turn pays a monthly stipend to some 7,000 terrorists. Abdullah Barghouti, for example, a mass murderer with the blood of 66 Israelis on his hands, has received 745,000 shekels ($216,ooo) from the PA.
MKs from both the Right and the Left have submitted proposals for legislation that would require the salaries of these terrorists to be deducted from the money Israel hands over to the PA. It is unthinkable that the PA subsidizes murderers with money that Israel transfers to it.
Very surprisingly, however, just before such a bill was to be submitted for a vote, Yisrael Beytenu MK Robert Ilatov asked to defer the vote so that the Defense Ministry, headed by Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman, could "study the issue." Furthermore, Defense Ministry officials refused to provide an end date for this review, despite Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman MK Avi Dichter's request for a time frame.
As the representative of Almagor, a terrorism victims advocacy group, I sat next to Shai Maimon during this proceeding. I warned him that if the Israeli legislation is frozen at this point, it could prompt the Americans to freeze their own legislation on the matter, as they have no reason to go further on the issue than us. MK Dichter also expressed similar concerns.
Meanwhile, MKs from both the Left and the Right wondered about the reasons behind the delay. MK Elazar Stern posited that this was simply a battle over credit for the bill, and offered to remove the name of the MK who proposed the bill and to attribute it to solely to Yisrael Beytenu, but Ilatov refused this offer.
The Americans have already passed their bill in two committees, in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. And us? This week the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee will hold another meeting.
What happened to Lieberman? Why are his people trying to delay the passing of this bill? In my assessment, the Civil Administration, which oversees Judea and Samaria under the authority of the defense minister, is not interested in the law or the deduction of funds from the Palestinian Authority. The administration is trying to water down the bill and erode its effectiveness. The method is endless deferment. Meanwhile, this absurd conduct has continued for decades.
In the meantime, the terrorists in Israeli prisons and their families celebrate with money that Israel gives them. Until the next murder, God forbid, unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wakes up and puts his full weight behind the bill.
