Abbas: We Will Continue Terror Payments

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas said the PA will continue to pay Palestinians that attack Israelis.

Abbas made his statement in a televised address on Feb. 19, two days after the Israeli Security Cabinet approved a law passed in July 2018. Under the new law Israel will deduct $138 million in tax payments to the PA. The decision is a direct response to the PA’s policy of providing payments to terrorists and their families.

Abbas doubled down on his announcement, stating, “Who are these ‘terrorists? The martyrs, the prisoners and the wounded.”

He added that the PA doesn’t want Israel’s money. “We don’t want the tax funds,” he said. “Let them keep it. If we had only 20-30 million shekels, which is the [monthly] sum paid for the families of martyrs, we would still pay it to them.”

Palestinian President Abbas: We Would Pay Martyrs' Families Even If Their Stipends Were All the Money We Had pic.twitter.com/rCrLQ0jREP

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) February 25, 2019

Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a Feb. 17 statement that the Israeli law is “piracy of the Palestinian people’s money” and is “a one-sided blow to the signed agreements, including the Paris Protocols.”