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For years, the Palestinian administration of the occupied West Bank has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in allowances to the families of the Palestinians imprisoned or killed by Israel – including those involved in violent attacks.
The United States and Israel have long condemned payments and put pressure on the Palestinian authority to end them. And on Monday, the authority announced that it was moving away from the practice – a change that analysts considered as an attempt to favor the favor of President Trump and to provide essential foreign aid in Palestinian chests.
Palestinian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue, said this decision was aimed at bringing the Palestinian administration in accordance with American law and allowing more foreign aid to flow. An American law has prohibited direct American economic assistance to the Palestinian authority as long as it has carried out the practice.
The prohibition has only aggravated the economic distress of the Palestinian authority short of money in recent years and it has had a hard time reaching both ends and paying the monthly wages of its employees .
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of aging of the Palestinian authority, published a decree on Monday evening which revised the payment system. The allowances were one of the most emotionally charged questions of Palestinian politics.
An organization set up to manage social protection payments to Palestinians in need, known as the national Palestinian economic empowerment institution, said in a statement that families of prisoners would receive funds based solely on financial needs and social protection criteria, “regardless of political affiliations or past actions. “”
The law means that the families of prisoners would always be eligible for social benefits as long as they demonstrate a financial need, instead of being compensated to combat the reign of Israel.
The new system would meet 43 internationally recognized criteria to assess social protection needs, according to the press release.
US and Israeli officials will closely monitor the implementation of the new policy to see if this leads to a real change.
The Palestinians were quick to criticize Mr. Abbas’ decision. Many in the West Bank and Gaza consider people imprisoned by Israel as victims of fundamentally unfair Israeli military courts or freedom fighters who fought against their occupants.
But Mr. Abbas is playing on a new start with Mr. Trump after years of bad blood, and he hopes a domestic dull response, said Ibrahim Dalalsha, Palestinian political analyst.
“This is the Trump effect. The Palestinian authority is willing to start with Trump, “said Dalalsha in a telephone interview.
Since the US elections in November, Mr. Abbas’s government has sought to rebuild his relations with the American president after his first tumultuous mandate. But the recent insistence of Mr. Trump that the two million Palestinians should be transferred outside the Gaza Strip have already added new strains.
During his first mandate, Trump scandalized the Palestinian management by moving the United States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the disputed capital of Jerusalem, joining most of the aids and peddling a peace plan that they considered deeply inclined in favor of Israel.
Israel has argued that paying benefits to families of prisoners who have been involved in fatal stab wounds, shots and suicide attacks against the Israelis creates financial incentive for terrorism. He labeled the policy of an arrangement of “remuneration”, in which the Palestinians with longer sentences obtain higher allowances, Effectively reward people for committing more deadly attacks according to the opinions of Israel.
In response, Israel retained funds from the Palestinian Authority, often more than $ 100 million each year. The money is drawn from tax revenues that Israel perceives on behalf of the Palestinian administration.
In 2018, Mr. Trump signed the Taylor Force Act, which ended the economic aid which directly benefited the Palestinian authority as long as she continued to pay the allowances. In his declaration, the new institution of Palestinian well-being said that the reform “aligns directly with the objectives of the Taylor Force Act”.
The Israeli government quickly rejected the announcement of Mr. Abbas as an imposture, saying that this would not end the practice of paying the families of prisoners.
“This is a new program of disappointment of the Palestinian Authority, which intends to continue to pay terrorists and their families through alternative payment channels,” said Oren Marmorstein, spokesperson of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
It was unlikely that Mr. Abbas’s decree immediately leads American aid to start pulling towards the Palestinian authority again. Trump has not yet said publicly if he was willing to support the Palestinian authority.
And other legal obstacles would remain, including the extended certification process that Mr. Abbas’s government is in accordance with the Taylor Force Act.
If the Palestinian authority applies changes, it would be remarkable to face Mr. Abbas, who had previously insisted that he would never give up payments. In the past, he went so far as to say that even if the Palestinian authority lacked money, he spent everything left on the allowances.
At the end of January, Hussein Al-Sheikh, a main advisor to Mr. Abbas, informed Steve Witkoff, the Middle East envoy of Mr. Trump, that the Palestinian authority was ready to move forward with the revision of His prisoner payment system, according to the Palestinian official and another diplomat.
The change immediately caused criticism in the West Bank, where the Palestinian authority administers certain regions, including major Palestinian cities. Hamas and Islamic jihad, the rivals of Mr. Abbas, also condemned the decision.
Qadura Fares, the commissioner of the Palestinian authority for the prisoners’ affairs, called for Mr. Abbas to “retract immediately” the decree at a press conference on Tuesday.
“This decision is deeply wrong,” said Esmat Mansour, a former prisoner who said that he had served 20 years in prison for involvement in a stab wound attack on an Israeli. “Prisoners are an icon. They are the ones who sacrificed our freedom. »»
Natan Odenheimer And Fatima Abdulkarim helped relate to this article.
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