PA salaries to terrorists up nearly 12% in 2019, says Israeli watchdog

The self-rule authority “decided to disregard its donor countries’ demand for full financial transparency and hid all its budgetary data,” says PMW.

By World Israel News Staff 

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has “finally publicized” its monthly financial spending records for the first five months of 2019, says Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an Israeli research institute that studies Palestinian society.

According to these records, says PMW, the Palestinians have “paid no less than 234,172,000 shekels (over $65 million), or, on average, 46,834,400 shekels a month in salaries to terrorist prisoners (including released prisoners) in spite of its self-imposed financial crisis.”

Salaries to terrorists have risen by 11.8% in 2019, says the watchdog.

The PA has criticized Israel for deducting the equivalent sums of the terror payments from tax revenues, which Jerusalem transfers to the Palestinians. As a protest, it has refused to receive any of the monies from Israel but has accused the Jewish State of causing the PA’s economic collapse.

The U.S. has also passed a law to bar aid to the Palestinians as long as the stipends to terrorists and their families continue to be paid.

PMW says that the Palestinian Finance Ministry put its budget expenditure reports back on its website only after the institute “exposed that the PA was hiding its finances.”

The self-rule authority “decided to disregard its donor countries’ demand of full financial transparency and hid all its budgetary data,” says PMW, adding that the PA blames “legal dependencies” on Israel for the fact that “financial reports were temporarily suspended.” This note appeared for almost three months on the Palestinian Finance Ministry’s website, says the Israeli institute.

It reflects “the PA’s decision to plunge the Palestinian economy into crisis and punish its public employees by cutting their salaries while guaranteeing the payment – in full – of the salaries to the terrorists,” says PMW.