[{"tags":[],"description":"The terrorists behind the suicide-bombing at a Sbarro pizzeria 18 years ago have received $910,823 from the Palestinian Authority, according to Palestinian Media Watch.","author":[{"name":{"en":"jns","he":""},"id":515,"about":"","citeName":{"en":"Jns.","he":""}}],"imageUrl":"/Storage/Images/2019/Sbarro.JPG","id":16093,"title":"Report: Terrorists behind Jerusalem pizza bombing received more than $910K","authorId":[515],"content":"

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The terrorists behind the suicide-bombing at a Sbarro pizzeria 18 years ago have received $910,823 from the Palestinian Authority, according to a Palestinian Media Watch report released on Thursday.

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The bombing killed 15 people, including two Americans, and injured around 130 others.

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The family of the suicide-bomber behind the Aug. 9, 2001, attack, Izz Al-Din Al-Masri, has been one of the recipients of P.A. rewards.

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According to the report, Al-Masri’s family has received $53,689 overall, while the bombmaker Abdullah Barghouti has collected $213,848.

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Ahlam Tamimi, who planned the attack, has shown no remorse, saying she has “no regrets.”

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Tamimi had been awarded $51,836 until she was released from prison, as part of a 2011 prisoner exchange that included Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit’s release from Hamas captivity, when she then escaped to Jordan.

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Tamimi is on America’s “Most Wanted Terrorist” list, but the United States has been unable to secure her extradition as a 1995 extradition agreement was not ratified by Jordan’s government.

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The Palestinian Authority allots $7,321 monthly to the Sbarro terrorists and their families, per the report.

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https://www.jns.org/report-terrorists-behind-jerusalem-pizza-bombing-received-more-than-910k/

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“If the P.A. were to publish their current monthly budgetary report, the international community would be horrified,” says PMW founder and director Itamar Marcus.

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Since 2014, the Palestinian Authority’s Finance Ministry has published an annual anticipated budget in the first part of the year, as well as monthly reports of actual expenditures in each budget category. According to Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch, as of April 2019, the P.A. Finance Ministry no longer displays this information on its website.

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The ministry’s previous financial transparency, which is a basic requirement for most donor countries to the P.A., has been replaced by a notice stating: “Due to the contingency law and legal dependencies with the Israeli side, the financial reports have been temporarily suspended.”

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Based on the P.A.’s 2018 monthly financial reports, PMW was able to determine that the P.A. spent at least NIS 502 million ($139 million) on salaries and other benefits to terrorists serving time in Israeli prisoners, and to released prisoners, in 2018. A short time later, the Israeli government announced that in order not to fund P.A. support for terrorism, it was deducting the NIS 502 million from the tax transfers to the P.A., divided into 12 monthly deductions of NIS 42 ($11.6) million.

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“Having understood that the financial transparency was used by PMW and then the Israeli government to see the precise amount the P.A. was spending to reward terrorist prisoners, the P.A. decided to hide these figures from the international community,” explains Maurice Hirsch, head of legal strategies at PMW.

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Significantly, the donor countries to the P.A. have demanded full financial transparency as a condition for giving the P.A. financial support. Currently, the P.A. is suffering from a self-imposed financial crisis due to its refusal to accept hundreds of millions of dollars a month that Israel has been sending it and has turned to the international community asking them for additional financial aid.

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“If the P.A. were to publish their current monthly budgetary report, the international community would be horrified,” says Itamar Marcus, PMW’s founder and director. “They would see P.A. expenditures in all budget categories were slashed significantly in 2019, except for the payments of salaries to terrorists and payment to so-called ‘martyrs’ families, which will be the same or higher than last year.

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“Whereas last year these two budget categories, which include the financial support for terrorists, were 7 percent of the P.A. budget, this year as a result of the P.A. refusal to accept the tax revenues, which account for 50 percent of its budget, the actual expenditures in these terror support categories will be a much greater percentage of P.A. expenses—possibly as high as 15 percent,” he continued. “One must ask the question: Would the international donors give money to the P.A. if they knew that such a high percentage of the P.A. expenses were for rewarding terror?”

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Data shows PA fiscal crisis due to allocation of funds to terrorists and families

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Israeli Finance Ministry shows that even after deductions due to the P.A.’s “pay for slay” program, the P.A. would have received more money in the first two months of 2019 than it did on average per month in 2018.

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(May 21, 2019 / JNS) Figures obtained by Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch following a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request to the Israeli Finance Ministry prove that even after Israel deducted from its tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority the amount that it spends on salaries to terrorist prisoners, the P.A. still would have received more money in the first two months of 2019 than it received on average per month in 2018.

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Tax revenues in the first two months of 2019 increased by a total of NIS 109 million ($30.2 million), while the amount of the deduction was only NIS 42 million ($11.6 million)—a positive difference in favor of the P.A. of NIS 67 million ($18.5 million).

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In January 2019, before Israel’s decision to make the deduction, the taxes collected for the P.A. amounted to more than NIS 743 million ($205.5 million), and in February to more than NIS 728 million ($201.4 million).

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“In 2018, tax revenues amounted to an average of NIS 670 million [$185.3 million] per month,” said Maurice Hirsch, head of legal strategies at PMW. “So even after deducting the NIS 42 million, the tax revenues in February 2019 totaled more than NIS 686 million [$190 million], NIS 16 million [$4.4 million] more than the monthly average in 2018.”

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“It is now being argued,” said Hirsch, “that the P.A. is in danger of economic collapse only because of Israel’s implementation of the law to deduct from the tax revenues. This claim is baseless. The P.A.’s financial crisis is not the result of the deduction of the funds by the Israeli government. The financial crisis is a direct result of the decision of the P.A. to insist not only to continue to encourage terror and reward terrorists, but also to demand that the State of Israel be a partner to this pugnacious policy and allow the P.A. to make the payments out of the tax revenues that Israel collects and transfers to it.”

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(https://www.jns.org/figures-show-pa-financial-crisis-is-fake/)

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Senior Palestinian official being treated in Tel Aviv, despite boycott for ordinary Palestinians

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The decision to prioritize salaries to terrorists over medical care for the general Palestinian population, thousands of whom were being treated in Israel annually, took effect on March 26.

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(May 15, 2019 / JNS) According to recent Israeli media reports, senior Palestinian official Jibril Rajoub is undergoing treatment at Ichilov/Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, despite the P.A.’s recent decision to cancel all medical treatment in Israel for Palestinians.

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Rajoub is secretary general of the Fatah Central Committee, president of the Palestinian Football Association and the Palestine Olympic Committee, and heads the PLO Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs.

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The P.A. decided to end all medical care for Palestinians in Israel last month following Israel’s decision to deduct from the tax money it collects for the P.A. an amount equal to the sums the P.A. pays to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists. The decision to prioritize salaries to terrorists over medical care for the general Palestinian population, thousands of whom were being treated in Israel annually, took effect on March 26. According to the official P.A. daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, P.A. Health Ministry Osama Al-Najjar announced that “the decision is political par excellence, and comes in response to Israel deducting sums from the money that it collects for us.”

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Commenting on this latest example of P.A. double standards, senior analyst for Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch Nan Jacques Zilberdik said: “The favoritism of the P.A. is striking. Not only do ordinary Palestinians have to forgo medical care in Israel because the P.A. is adamant about paying high salaries to terrorists, Palestinians also have to witness one of their own leaders getting treatment in a Israeli hospital that for them is out of bounds. Someone should give Rajoub a copy of [George] Orwell’s Animal Farm.”

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Rajoub has been among the most vocal of Palestinian leaders in supporting terrorism, and explicitly called to murder Israelis during the Palestinian terrorism wave of 2015-2016, the so-called “knife intifada,” which saw months of murderous Palestinian attacks, including stabbings, shootings and vehicular assaults. In repeated public statements on P.A. TV, Rajoub informed Palestinians that murderers of Israelis should be seen as Palestinian “heroes” and “crowns on the head of every Palestinian.”

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Rajoub also stated that Fatah “blessed and encouraged” the murderers, and that he objected to suicide bombings on Tel Aviv buses only because the international community would be angry at those kind of killings. “We want to fight in such a way that the world and the international community will remain by our side,” he said. He explained that Palestinians should focus on killing soldiers or “settlers” because the international community doesn’t care about them.

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Rajoub has also made it his key personal issue to be against “normalization” with Israel.

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As chairman of the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sport Affairs, Rajoub has prohibited Palestinian athletes from engaging in any sports activities with Israelis. According to Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, he recently he demanded that “the Arab and Islamic states cease every form of normalization with Israel in the field of sports” and “demanded” that the Spanish football club Atlético Madrid “not play against the racist club Beitar Jerusalem” because the match was to take place in what Rajoub referred to as “an occupied Palestinian area.”

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In reality, the match was to take place in western Jerusalem.

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(https://www.jns.org/senior-palestinian-official-being-treated-in-israel-despite-boycott/)

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\n","news":false,"thumbnail":"/Storage/Images/2019/JNS logo.png"},{"published":true,"news":false,"description":"PA reveals that all Palestinian terrorists ‘receive orders from us’","lang":"en","imageUrl":"/Storage/Images/2019/JNS logo.png","indexId":"index79","date":{"type":"firestore/timestamp/1.0","seconds":1557273600,"nanoseconds":0},"authorId":[515],"author":[{"id":515,"name":{"en":"jns","he":""},"about":"","citeName":{"en":"Jns.","he":""}}],"tags":[],"id":15672,"contentType":"Article","content":"

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PA reveals that all Palestinian terrorists ‘receive orders from us’

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Mahmoud Abbas: Terrorists “were killed, imprisoned or wounded because of a national interest and for the sake of a national interest, and not for personal reasons.”

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P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina revealed: “It is impossible to send a soldier to war and then not take care of his family.”

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Speaking about the P.A.’s difficult financial situation, Rudeina told Israel’s Kan TV on April 16 that “Israel needs to understand this. It is impossible to send a soldier to war and then not take care of his family. We are talking about someone who acts on our behalf and receives orders from us.”

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Similarly, Abbas himself stressed the P.A.’s “obligation” to pay terrorists and their families—in his words “the martyrs, the prisoners and the wounded.”

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Speaking at the Arab League conference in Cairo in April, Abbas said: “We have been paying salaries to the families of the martyrs, to the prisoners and to the wounded since 1965. This is because they were killed, imprisoned or wounded because of a national interest and for the sake of a national interest, and not for personal reasons. It is our obligation to take care of their relatives.” (Official PA TV, April 21, 2019.)

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These two statements echo Abbas’s 2005 demand that Israel release all prisoners because, as he said, the P.A. “ordered them to do” what they did. Abbas said at the time: “I demand [the release of] prisoners because they are human beings, who did what we—we—ordered them to do. We—the [Palestinian] Authority. They should not be punished while we sit at one table negotiating.”

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Discussing the term “blood-stained hands,” Abbas said: “This is war. One [i.e., Israel] ordered a soldier to kill, and I ordered my son, brother, or others, to carry out the duty of resistance [a euphemism for terrorism]. He is a fighter just like any other fighter.” (Official P.A. TV, Feb. 14, 2005.)

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Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, said: “The P.A. have finally admitted what PMW has claimed for years—that due to the P.A.’s overall promotion of terrorism and the rewarding of terrorism, the P.A. recognizes that every Palestinian who commits an act of terrorism against Israelis and Jews is acting under the umbrella of the P.A. This is an important and long-overdue admission of guilt by Abbas and the P.A. Although seen by the international community as an honest peace partner, the P.A. has reiterated its responsibility for all Palestinian terrorism. We call on the international community to hold the P.A. and its leaders accountable for their actions.”

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Most significantly, they “received orders” from the Palestinian Authority.

\n(https://www.jns.org/pa-admits-all-palestinian-terrorists-receive-orders-from-us/)

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PA leader Abbas sends contradictory messages to American, Palestinian audiences

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Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to Palestinians: “The Al-Aqsa [mosque compound, i.e., including the Temple Mount] is ours ... and they [Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet.”

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(April 5, 2019 / JNS) When talking to a group of visiting Harvard students last week about a future division of Jerusalem, Palestinian Authority leader Abbas declared that “the holy sites will remain open to the three [monotheistic] religions at all times. It will be forbidden to prevent any person—Christian, Jew, Muslim—from going and performing his religious rituals.” (Official P.A. TV, March 24, 2019).

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Palestinian Media Watch has shown that these remarks directly contradict previous statements made by Abbas, in which he explicitly called for Palestinian violence to prevent Jews from going to Judaism’s holiest site—the Temple Mount. The P.A. chief has repeatedly said that the entire Temple Mount belongs to the Muslims alone, and that the Jews “have no right to defile [it] with their filthy feet.” (Official P.A. TV, Sept. 16, 2015 and official website of P.A. chairman Abbas, Sept. 16, 2015). In 2015, he explicitly called for violence to prevent Jews on the Temple Mount, saying he blessed “every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem.”

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In 2014, Abbas called for Palestinians to “prevent” Jews from “defiling” the Muslim and Christian holy places, urging his people to “prevent them” (the Jews) from entering the Temple Mount. Official P.A. TV, which is controlled by Abbas, emphasized the importance of this statement by rebroadcasting it 19 times in three days. Fatah rebroadcast this speech again on July 15, 2017 and Nov. 28, 2018 on their official Facebook page.

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Abbas’s tolerant statement to the American students also contradicts the policy of his advisor on religious and Islamic affairs, the PA..’s Supreme Shari’ah Judge Mahmoud Al-Habbash. Just last month, Al Habbash condemned the European Union for using the term “Temple Mount,” thereby acknowledging the Jewish connection to the site and the existence of a Jewish Temple in the past, instead of only referring to the location with the Muslim name “Haram al-Sharif,” the Noble Sanctuary.

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He demanded that the “E.U. re-examine this statement, avoid harming the Palestinian people’s rights, and retract this term that inherently implies recognition of the occupation state’s right to Jerusalem’s Noble Sanctuary (i.e., Temple Mount), to which the Palestinian people and its leadership firmly object.” (WAFA, official P.A. news agency, March 25, 2019).

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P.A. government spokesman Yusuf Al-Mahmoud stressed this fundamental P.A. ideology that the P.A. does not limit its “Muslim ownership” to the Al-Aqsa mosque structure but rather claims the entire Temple Mount compound as part of “the Al-Aqsa mosque,” and “belonging to Muslims only.” (Official P.A. daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 19, 2019)

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On Feb. 18, 2019, Muslims stormed the “Gate of Mercy,” an area on the Temple Mount that had been sealed off by an Israeli court order after being used by Hamas and the banned Islamic Movement to teach hatred and incite violence. In response to the arrest of several people who participated, the following day, P.A. Jerusalem District Governor Adnan Ghaith proclaimed that the “blessed Al-Aqsa mosque belongs to the Muslims only, and that the steps of escalation against the Al-Aqsa mosque harm the sensibilities of the people of Jerusalem.” (Official P.A. daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 19, 2019)

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Echoing this claim, Al-Aqsa mosque preacher Sheikh Muhammad Salim, repeated that “the Al-Aqsa mosque belongs solely to Muslims.” (Official P.A. daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 2, 2019).

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‘We will never accept them’

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Rejecting Israel’s rule of law, the P.A.’s Supreme Shari’ah Judge Mahmoud Al-Habbash, called Israel’s enforcement of its court decision “a war against Islam.”

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He added: “Our people will defend the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque with what is most precious of all to it, and no one will ever have sovereignty over it except the Palestinian people. These steps will never pass, and we will not accept them, regardless of the price … the Arabs and Muslims [have] to act to save Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa mosque, and [Jerusalem’s] Islamic and Christian holy sites.” (Official P.A. daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 19, 2019).

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“The recent P.A.-supported storming of the Mercy Gate compound demonstrates the true nature of the P.A. approach, contradicts chairman Abbas’s overtures of peace to his Harvard guests and underscores the P.A.’s anti-Semitic policies in rejecting Jewish rights on the Temple Mount,” explains Maurice Hirsch, head of legal strategies at PMW.

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Last month, P.A. Supreme Shari’ah Judge and P.A. leader Abbas’s adviser Al-Habbash, went even further when he said “the Jerusalem Noble Sanctuary (i.e., the Temple Mount) with all of its parts, including the Al-Buraq Wall (i.e., the Western Wall of the Temple Mount) and Plaza and the area of the ‘Gate of Mercy,’ is a pure Islamic heritage, despite all of the occupation’s attempts to take control of it and carry out its Judaization plots in the holy city.” (Official P.A. daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 23, 2019)

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Nan Jacques Zilberdik, senior analyst at PMW says: “The P.A. goes as far as to reject Jewish rights even to the Western Wall and its plaza, claiming them as well to be exclusively Islamic heritage, and issues almost daily denials of the historical fact of the connection to Jerusalem and the two Jewish temples that stood on the mount, while P.A. officials and media constantly refer to the existence of a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount as a ‘myth.’ Furthermore, Abbas’s remarks to an international audience continue to completely contradict what he is saying to his domestic audience. One has to wonder why, and to whom is he telling the truth?”

\n(https://www.jns.org/pa-leader-abbas-sends-contradictory-messages-to-american-palestinian-audiences/)

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Abbas pushes Palestinians to the brink of poverty

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Will the Palestinian Authority really continue to prioritize paying terrorist salaries over providing basic government services to its own people? By Israel Kasnett

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(May 3, 2019 / JNS) Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas announced during a government meeting in Ramallah on Monday that he would refuse to accept any tax revenues collected by Israel as long as Israel deducted payments made to families of security prisoners and “martyrs.”

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Now, the European Union will provide 22 million euros in additional humanitarian assistance to the P.A. on top of the 300 million euros it already provides each year. It will also reportedly ask the P.A. to accept the transfer of deducted tax funds from Israel until a solution to the financial crisis can be found.

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This comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon worked to deliver the money to the P.A. in an effort to preempt a possible looming Palestinian economic collapse.

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But will the P.A. really continue to prioritize paying terrorist salaries over providing basic government services to its own people?

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According to Yossi Kuperwasser, an Israeli intelligence and security expert and director of the Project on Regional Middle East Developments at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, “The P.A. will not collapse. It was their most important achievement. Why would they let it collapse? They know that at any point, if they want, they can return to the status quo and keep taking the money,” he told JNS. “The option is there for them to take the money.”

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“The Palestinians are trying to make a point by insisting on receiving all of the money,” he added.

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Palestinian Media Watch founder Itamar Marcus, head of legal strategies Maurice Hirsch and analyst Nan Jacques Zilberdik wrote, “If Abbas follows through with his decision and the P.A. refuses to accept this money next month, it will conclusively confirm that Abbas and the P.A. prioritize rewarding terrorists and murderers rather than the best interests of the entire Palestinian population. Instead of accepting that Israel refuses to transfer $11.6 million/month for terror rewards, Abbas prefers to punish the entire Palestinian population by refusing $174.5 million of tax money, which would benefit all Palestinians.”

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According to Kuperwasser’s assessment, the Palestinians believe that since Israel is so concerned that the Palestinians will not have enough money, it would rather give them the entire sum even if it means they will be able to pay salaries to terrorists and kill Israelis, “which is, of course, misreading the Israeli position.”

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Israel has made clear that it will no longer allow the tax transfers to be used as a source of income for terrorists and their families.

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Abbas’s refusal to accept any money whatsoever “just shows that what is important to the Palestinians is paying salaries to terrorists, which clearly paints the P.A. as a terror-sponsoring entity,” Kuperwasser added.

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He referred to the recently released publication by the “PLO Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society,” in which the Palestinians reiterate their refusal to recognize the state of the Jewish nation or disavow terrorism. “This means the entire Oslo process was some sort of ploy, some sort of deceit. They never meant to change anything.”

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Kuperwasser explained that their violent struggle against Israel as a Jewish state—not just the “occupation”—is misleading because the P.A. already controls the lives of most of the Palestinians in the West Bank.

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“This is an effort to get legitimacy to continue paying salaries to terrorists,” he said. “Of course, Israel cannot accept it.”

\n(https://www.jns.org/abbas-pushes-palestinians-to-the-brink-of-poverty/)

\n","lang":"en","published":true,"news":false,"thumbnail":"/Storage/Images/2019/JNS logo.png"},{"authorId":[515],"content":"

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Palestinians ‘definitely’ going to reject Trump’s Mideast peace plan

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Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch sees the conflict as continuing until the Palestinians change their culture of hate and education system, saying “until that happens, talk of land for peace is a recipe for more tragedy.”

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By Ariel Ben Solomon

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(April 17, 2019 / JNS) The Mideast peace plan soon to be presented by the U.S. administration is likely not going to get very far upon its initial presentation, but it could provide Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump with an opportunity to alter the dynamics of the conflict.

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Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, told JNS in an exclusive interview that the Palestinian Authority “will definitely reject” the upcoming U.S. backed peace plan, and that past Palestinian behavior does not lend support to any chance of compromise. The plan offered by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was, according to PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, extremely generous by offering P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas 100 percent of the land area he demanded, the division of Jerusalem and the acceptance into Israel of 150,000 “refugees,” yet Abbas rejected it.

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The Trump plan is bound to offer the Palestinians much less, so rejection is certain.

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“The root of the conflict is not merely territorial. A poll by ADL in 2014 found that Palestinians ‘showed the highest levels of anti-Semitism in the world,’ and PMW was not at all surprised by this finding. The anti-Semitism taught through official P.A. structures promote the worst hatred imaginable, including the message that the Jews are the fundamental evil force in the world and therefore need to be eliminated for the benefit of all humanity,” said Marcus.

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For example, a P.A. preacher on official P.A. TV said in December that Jews pass on evil in their genes: “Humanity will never be able to live with them … count them and kill them one by one.”

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Marcus sees the conflict as continuing until the Palestinians change their culture of hate. “Until that happens, talk of land for peace is a recipe for more tragedy. Israel has paid with many deaths every time we followed the ‘land for peace’ formula since the signing of the Oslo Accords.”

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P.A. will change only if it’s ‘forced to change’

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Marcus spends much of his time traveling and speaking to world parliaments and government officials in order to educate them about what is really going on inside Palestinian society under direction of the its leaders. He recently visited parliaments in the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Canada. “They have heard of Palestinian incitement, but until they actually meet with me, they don’t realize the full extent and danger of P.A. indoctrination to hate and terror.”

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“I show them that the fundamental P.A. ideology regarding Israel is not that different from Hamas, including denying Israel’s right to exist, rewarding terrorists and naming schools and sporting events after murderers. However, the P.A. leaders’ policy of duplicity has been very successful, and much of the international community thinks they are peace-promoting,” continued Marcus.

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His goal is to reach and influence international decision-makers. “The only way the P.A. will ever change is if they lose international support and are forced to change.”

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Marcus cites PMW’s main objectives: First, to stop Israel’s isolation around the world and to convince governments to stop pressuring Israel to make concessions, which has proven to be detrimental. And second, which is more long-term, is to have real change in the Palestinian world. The only way this will happen is when the international community starts treating the P.A. like a terror-supporting entity and isolates them politically. Once the P.A. stops being artificially propped up by the international community, the Palestinian people may “eventually rise up against their corrupt leadership and replace them with better leaders.”

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Not only the Israeli government, but many governments and legislators around the world, including Trump’s advisers, receive regular updates from PMW, and some of them tweet PMW findings to their followers.

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‘Peace will be built through people-to-people contacts’

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Asked if Netanyahu and Trump are likely aware of the probable Palestinian rejection of the upcoming proposal and are planning to move forward with Netanyahu’s campaign promise of extending sovereignty to the West Bank, Marcus replied that if this occurred, he predicts that Palestinian opposition would not be that explosive, despite likely attempts to incite violence by Abbas.

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Abbas and his official P.A. media tried to incite violence when the United States moved its embassy to Jerusalem, but it didn’t succeed, said Marcus. The proposal to extend Israeli law to Israeli cities in Judea and Samaria “won’t change daily life on the ground, and for most Palestinians will just be a technical issue that they read about,” he argued.

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On the other hand, if such a move could lead to more business cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, it would benefit everyone, he predicted. Such cooperation is already strong and growing, according to Marcus, who notes that these projects don’t get the publicity they deserve.

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Marcus has his own formula for peace: “Peace will be built through people-to-people contacts and not by politicians working over texts of peace agreements. In 1996, following 30 years of Israeli administration—and daily contact between Israelis and the Arab population—the most important Palestinian pollster found that Palestinians thought that Israel was the best in the world in democracy and human rights, compared to the U.S., France and the P.A. itself.”

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Marcus added “that was because from 1967 to 1994, borders were open, and there was no Palestinian Authority to poison the minds of the population.”

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“A peace plan that has a chance to work today must increase cooperation and contact between Palestinians and Israelis of all ages, and change all the fundamentals of P.A. education and public messaging.”

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Marcus went on to conclude: “Once the Palestinian population is no longer taught that Jews are ‘monkeys, pigs and the enemies of Allah,’ and this is replaced with belief in the value of peace with Israel and seeks the benefits cooperation with Israel, serious talk about political arrangements can begin. Until this happens, there’s no point to politicians wasting their time drawing new lines on maps and participating in meaningless chatter about a future peace agreement that P.A. leaders have no plans to accept or implement.”

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PMW monitors and reports on the activities and statements of the Palestinian leadership daily. It continues to warn about the P.A.’s ongoing hate and terror incitement, especially in the education of Palestinian youth, and the P.A.’s continued denial of Israel’s right to exist and anticipation of its destruction.

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(https://www.jns.org/palestinians-definitely-going-to-reject-trumps-mideast-peace-plan/)

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