End ‘sick’ payments to Palestinian killers

You almost certainly didn’t know it, but your tax dollars have gone to pay terrorists who kill Israelis and Americans. Hard to believe? You bet. But last week a U.S. Senate committee voted to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in annual aid to the Palestinian Authority until it stops paying salaries and benefits to Palestinians jailed for committing violent crimes against Israelis and Americans.

Hard to believe, but this is what is going on in an area of the world where violence never seems to end.

The Palestinian Authority doesn’t even deny making monthly payments to “anyone incarcerated in [Israel’s] prisons for his participation in the struggle against the occupation.”

“This is sick,” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “If you commit a fairly low-level terrorist act, you get paid $400 a month. If you commit a very egregious terrorist act — you murder an Israeli or someone else and you get a 30-year sentence — you get $3,500 a month.”

By a vote of 17-4, the committee passed the Taylor Force Act, named for a 29-year-old American military veteran fatally stabbed by a Palestinian while visiting Israel last year. His killer, who wounded 11 others, was hailed by the Palestinian Authority as a “heroic martyr.”

It’s shocking that the Palestinian Authority not only admits to making these payments, it defends this decades-old stipend system as righteous.

The Martyr’s Fund supports “families who lost their breadwinners to the atrocities of the occupation,” says Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.S. “The program has served a social and security need to provide for our people.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he will not stop the practice of paying terrorists, even if he has to step down. “I will not compromise on the salary of a martyr or a prisoner,” he said last month.

The money the U.S. sends to the Palestinian Authority — the Trump administration’s budget request for fiscal 2018 includes roughly $260 million — is supposed to go for economic development and law enforcement programs in the West Bank and Gaza. It’s also meant to help Palestinians who live in poverty and lack the basic essentials of life.

America sends this money not only as a humanitarian gesture, but as a goodwill gesture to encourage peace in the region. Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. has given the Palestinian Authority more than $5 billion in aid. But after these payments came to light last year, Congress cut the check by the amount believed to be going to terrorists and/or their families.

But more must be done. Now that we know, we cannot stomach any American tax dollars being spent to support and encourage terrorists.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, S.C., one of the bill’s sponsors, calls the money “pay to slay” and estimates the Palestinian Authority has made $144 million in “martyr payments.”

“I insist that they [Palestinian Authority] stop paying their young people to become terrorists and I don’t want our tax dollars used to support any government that would do that,” he said.

Some Democrats fear withholding badly-needed foreign aid will worsen problems in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, the legislation is being adjusted to place the money in an escrow account that can’t be accessed until it’s certified that payments for acts of terrorism have stopped.

If the Palestinian Authority wants continued American aid, it must stop spending it as blood money. That, Mr. Abbas, is the issue on which there can be no compromise.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Elana Simms, Gary Stein and Editor-in-Chief Howard Saltz.