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Palestinian Authority Denies ‘Politico’ Report That It Will Change Pay-for-Slay Program
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appoints Mohammad Mustafa as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in Ramallah, in the West Bank March 14, 2024 in this handout image. Photo: Palestinian president office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
The Palestinian official in charge of ensuring that salaries are paid to the families of terrorists in the notorious “Pay-for-Slay” program has categorically dismissed reports that the Palestinian Authority (PA) would end the payments.
A March 2024 report in Politico cited two Biden administration officials saying that, “the U.S. is near a deal with the Palestinian Authority to end its contentious ‘martyr payments’ for people who commit acts of violence against Israel.”
In response, Qadura Fares, the Director of the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and Chairman of the PA-funded Prisoners’ Club, declared that the reports are false because paying salaries to prisoners is “anchored in Palestinian law and is non-negotiable”:
Senior sources in the American administration said that a draft of the American plan that was submitted to the PA presents an alternative solution to the question of the salaries paid to the Palestinian families, and it will start by implementing a comprehensive plan by the PA on the topic of welfare …
Director of Palestinian [PLO] Commission of Prisoners’ [Affairs] Qadura Fares emphasized that the reports given on this matter are baseless, but they are being disseminated now and then. He directed attention to how this is part of the Israeli media’s attempt to distort and tarnish the image of the PA.
In an interview with Erem News, Fares said that the payment of salaries to the families of the prisoners and the Martyrs is anchored in Palestinian law and is non-negotiable, and he even strongly emphasized that the payment of salaries to the families of the prisoners and the Martyrs by the PA is “a red line.” [emphasis added]
[Erem News, UAE-based news website, April 1, 2024]
For years, the US and European countries have demanded that the PA reframe its rewards-for-terrorists program so that it becomes a social welfare program for the families of terrorists, but the PA has refused. Now, Politico has reported that “drafts of the PA payments reform plans seen by U.S. officials indicate that Palestinian leaders will replace the current scheme with a general welfare program.”
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported on a similar initiative in 2013, just two years after PMW exposed the PA’s Pay-for-Slay program.
After PMW presented the evidence to European countries, both Britain and Norway asked the PA to make a superficial change to their law by calling the payments social “assistance” instead of salaries to prisoners. Even this cosmetic change, however, was met with outrage among the Palestinian public and the prisoners’ organizations.
The then-Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs, Issa Karake, explained that the prisoners are supported by the PA “out of esteem for their sacrifice and struggle,” i.e., as a reward for their terror. Referring to terror rewards as social “assistance” was considered insulting to the terrorists.
PMW has already proven that the salaries the PA pays to the terrorist prisoners are not welfare payments that are based on need, but rather are rewards for terror that increase the longer the terrorist is in prison.
Repeating the PA position from 2013, Qadura Fares continued to express his indignation at the mere prospect of labeling the payments as social welfare, calling it a “principled issue.” In response to a question from Ajyal Radio asking about the difference between the terms, Fares said:
The issue is not just the finances of the families that lost their source of livelihood, whether as a result of Martyrdom, imprisonment, or wounding. The issue is not just a material issue. Likewise, if you would pose this question as a poll to the Palestinian public opinion, the overwhelming majority of our Palestinian people would say there is a difference. Yes, there is a difference …
This is a Palestinian internal national issue, and we are taking action relying on a principle that was approved by the [PA] Parliament (Legislative Council) that was elected by the Palestinian people, the Palestinian National Council, and the [PLO] Central Council, which are the central institutions and which adopted the principle that the families of the Martyrs, the wounded, and the prisoners need to live a dignified life. [emphasis added]
[PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, Facebook page, April 2, 2024]
According to Fares and the PA, having the prisoners’ families receive social welfare instead of terror rewards is not dignified.
Fares is not the only senior official confirming that the terror rewards will stay. PA General Intelligence Service officials also stressed that the PA would continue to pay the prisoners’ salaries, even if it went bankrupt:
[PA General Intelligence] Service Director in Jenin Adnan Abu Aisheh said that the message of the service, under the instructions of its leader [Head of PA General Intelligence Service] Majed Faraj, is to emphasize what [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas has emphasized again and again –that if we are left with one penny, it will be paid to the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners. [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 5, 2024]
Significantly, not only did Abbas say that, but — as reported by Palestinian Media Watch — official PA TV has rebroadcast Abbas’ statement well over 200 times: that even if the PA had only “one penny” left, it would go to the terrorists and their families.
PMW will continue to follow this important story, as the PA vows to continue rewarding its terrorist “heroes,” while the US seeks to have the PA make cosmetic changes to create the pretense that the PA is no longer a terror-supporting entity.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is PMW’s Founder and Director. A version of this article originally appeared at PMW.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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