Following the Aug. 29 meeting in Ramallah of Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, Gantz announced that Israel would “loan” the P.A. half a billion shekels ($155 million) to keep it afloat over the coming months.

At the same time, Israel is belatedly implementing a freeze on the tax revenues it transfers to the P.A., in protest against the stipends the P.A. disburses to convicted terrorists and their families. By coincidence, the sum being withheld is similar to that of the “loan”—about 600 million shekels ($186 million) per year, or NIS 50 million ($15.5 million) per month.

(This amount does not reflect the total sum paid by the P.A. to convicted terrorists and the families of deceased terrorists, but rather the amount Israel can confirm with certainty that the P.A. paid in the previous year.)

This move makes a mockery not only of Israel’s protests against the P.A.’s terror stipends but also of Israeli law, which mandates that the government take action against the P.A. over these stipends. The P.A., for its part, insists on paying these salaries to all imprisoned (and released) terrorists under a Palestinian law that defines them as the “fighting sector of Palestinian society.”... Read More: JNS