Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas
...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase....
The decree states that families of prisoners and slain attackers who require welfare assistance will be eligible for stipends based solely on their financial needs, as is the case with other Paleostinians.
Israel and other countries have long denounced the stipends that Jerusalem said actively encouraged terror, with critics dubbing it the "pay-to-slay" system.
The initiative to cancel the stipends had been in the works for years, and its pilot program was even quietly launched toward the end of the Biden administration, a source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel.
Ramallah presented the reform to the US near the beginning of the previous administration, seeking to bring the PA into compliance with the Taylor Force Act — 2018 congressional legislation that suspended US aid to the PA as long as it continued granting the stipends.
The US then facilitated a dialogue with the Israeli government to explain the contents of the reform, the source said, acknowledging that it was met with skepticism in Jerusalem.
There were several points toward the end of the Biden administration’s term in which the PA decision was on the verge of being announced, a second source said, arguing that Israel seemed to be trying to stall the matter. In the months leading up to Hamas
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
’s October 7 onslaught, the Biden administration sought to receive a nod of approval from Israel for the reform, worried that a rejection could lead pro-Israel politicians in Congress to follow suit, thereby hampering the reform’s legitimacy in Washington. The second source indicated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office had dragged its feet on the matter, even as the premier regularly cited the controversial policy to argue that the PA cannot be trusted.
It is unlikely that the reform will satisfy the Netanyahu government, which has pledged to box the PA out of any role in the post-war governance of Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
The Foreign Ministry issued a statement Monday night dismissing the decree "as a new fraudulent exercise by the PA, which intends to continue making payments to forces of Evil and their families through other channels."
Israeli law requires the government to conduct a review of the PA’s prisoner payment system at the beginning of every calendar year, so Jerusalem could theoretically wait until early 2026 before deciding whether Ramallah is in compliance with Knesset legislation targeting the PA over its controversial stipends.
The Trump administration may also have different criteria for adjudicating the PA reform, even though it was authorized by career legal
Biden officials also briefed congressional politicians about the reform last year and received support from both sides of the aisle, including Republican Lindsey Graham
...soft-spoken senator from South Carolina, former best buddy of John
MaverickMcCain. Since McCain's demise, Graham has become more outspoken, more Republican and more of a supporter of President Trump. The speech he gave in support of Brett Kavanaugh was downright manly and really cheesed off the Dems...
, the second source said.
The Taylor Force Act requires the US government to review the PA’s compliance every six months.
According to the text of the decree posted on the official PA news agency WAFA, the program to allocate welfare funds will be transferred from the Social Development Ministry to a new fund called the Paleostinian National Foundation for Economic Empowerment.
The fund will be headed by current PA Social Welfare Minister Ahmad Majdalani, according to the second source.
A strict criteria system has been put in place to determine eligibility that will be reviewed twice a year, said the second source.
Many families of prisoners and slain attackers who were receiving government stipends will continue to receive financial aid, given the high poverty rate in the West Bank. This has only gone up further since October 7, with Israel ending its permit system to over 100,000 Paleostinians working in Israel and the settlements — a key component of the West Bank’s economy.
The practice of paying allowances to those convicted of carrying out terror attacks, and to the families of those killed while carrying out attacks, has been pilloried by critics as incentivizing terror, and held up by Israel as a symbol of PA corruption and its inability to serve as a partner for peace.
Paleostinian leaders have long defended the payments, describing them as a form of social welfare and necessary compensation for victims of what they said is Israel’s callous military justice system in the West Bank.
Abbas signed the decree as the US Supreme Court prepares to adjudicate a case in the coming months on whether American victims can sue the PA and its international arm, the Paleostine Liberation Organization, for damages due to Ramallah’s payments program.
According to the PA, the decree was made in part to "strengthen the status of the state of Paleostine" in the UN and other international bodies and gain further international recognition, as well as "with the aim of restoring international aid programs that were suspended in the past year."
The move was also designed to stop "the illegal deductions" that Israel made from taxes it gathered on behalf of the Paleostinian Authority, the decree added. Neither the English nor Arabic version of the announcement made any reference to the Trump administration or to the United States.
Under interim peace accords reached in the 1990s, Israel’s Finance Ministry collects tax revenues on behalf of the PA and makes monthly transfers to Ramallah, but it has withheld funds over the years due to disputes, including, most recently, in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.
In 2018, Israel passed a law requiring that a sum equal to the monthly stipends the PA pays to security prisoners and the families of slain attackers be withheld from the tax revenues it transfers to the Paleostinians.
Israel withheld hundreds of millions of shekels from the PA under the legislation, citing the payments. At the same time, Israel has in the past offered loans to the PA in order to keep it afloat and prevent its total breakdown.
While the previous administration believed that the reform would bring the PA into compliance with the Taylor Force Act, the US would still be barred from directly funding the PA, due to separate US legislation preventing such aid once Ramallah began advancing investigations against Israel at the International Criminal Court.
However,
death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate...
the reform would still theoretically be sufficient enough to enable the US to fund projects that directly benefit the PA.
The decree from the PA on Monday noted that the move should also assist with "the new burdens of helping our people in the Gaza Strip."
While the effort to reform the PA prisoner payment system has been in the works for years, and was largely finalized under the Biden administration, Ramallah decided to hold off on announcing the move, preferring to save it as a goodwill gesture for the incoming Trump administration.
During the transition between the Biden and Trump White Houses, top PA officials briefed their counterparts in the incoming Trump administration regarding their plan, a third and a fourth source familiar told The Times of Israel on Monday.
However,
death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate...
those two sources believed that the announcement would be put on the back burner following Trump’s declaration last week that he planned to take over Gaza and permanently displace the population. The Gaza proposal sent shockwaves throughout the Arab world, which is now in the middle of a full-throttled campaign against the Trump idea.
A Paleostinian official told The Times of Israel during the presidential transition process that Ramallah had learned lessons from the way it dealt with Trump during his first term. Abbas severed ties with the US after Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, less than a year after taking office. The US proceeded to broker the Abraham Accords, while the Paleostinians were left out of the process.
As efforts to include Saudi Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...in those accords have intensified, Ramallah has worked to boost its ties with Riyadh, hoping that the latter will condition a deal with Israel on a credible and irreversible pathway to a future Paleostinian state. Meanwhile,
...back at the shootout, Butch cautiously raised his hat over the edge of the horse trough on the end of a stick......
PA officials indicated to Trump aides that they would be prepared to use his 2020 peace plan as a basis for negotiations.
The decree on Monday is Ramallah’s latest effort to improve ties with Washington and amounts to a major victory for Trump, who managed to secure a concession from the PA that repeated US administrations had worked to actualize.
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