NY Post op-ed cites PMW findings in call to hold the PA responsible for ‘pay-to-slay’ policy
The US must hold Palestinians responsible for terror
The long-overdue passage of the Taylor Force Act addresses a well-known fact about the Palestinian Authority that has been overlooked by policymakers and under-reported by international media for decades: The PA is a terror-sponsoring entity. The “pay-to-slay” policy is backed by the force of law and specific budgetary allocations.
A five-year prison sentence for men convicted of terrorism-related charges in Israeli courts, and a two-year sentence for women, earn a lifetime annuity. Right now there are 6,500 such prisoners.
How does the Taylor Force Act make the PA accountable and end this travesty? The law sets down very specific, transparent markers to ensure that the PA complies before it can receive US taxpayer funds. This is necessary, because the PA has a habit of making superficial changes that leaves its pay-to-slay system intact.
For example, in 2014, Palestinian Media Watch noted that when pressure was put on the PA to stop paying terrorists, it shut down the PA Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs. But then it announced that it had created a new PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs. The head of the PLO commission was Issa Karake, who had been the PA’s Minister of Prisoner Affairs, and the ultimate authority for the new commission lay with PA President Mahmoud Abbas. With the name change, Abbas could claim that the PA was no longer paying terrorists, while the mechanism for doing so didn’t change at all…
If the Taylor Force Act compels the Palestinians to change their behavior in a verifiable fashion, it might be the first step toward real accountability, the lack of which provides little incentive for PA leaders to change the status quo or negotiate in good faith.
[https://nypost.com/2018/06/07/the-us-must-hold-palestinians-responsible-for-terror/]