OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS: Israel enacted a law on Tuesday to financially penalise the Palestinian Authority for paying stipends to Palestinians jailed by Israel, their families, and the families of those killed by Israeli forces.The 120-seat parliament voted 87-15 in favour of the legislation that orders holding back part of the roughly $130 million in tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians each month under interim peace agreements.The Western-backed Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas has limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank where Israel retains overall security control. Palestinians seek a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Islamist Hamas group, bitter rivals of Abbas’s more secular Fatah faction, controls the Gaza StripIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly demanded that the Palestinians, who view prisoners as national heroes, stop paying stipends to them and their families.Earlier this year, US lawmakers enacted legislation to sharply reduce the annual $300 million in US aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it took steps to stop making what lawmakers described as payments that reward violent crime.The measure, known as the Taylor Force Act, was named after a 29-year-old American military veteran fatally stabbed by a Palestinian while visiting Israel in 2016.Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman wrote on Twitter after the vote: "We promised to halt the stipend free-for-all for terrorists and we have made good on our promise. It’s over. Every shekel that Abu Mazen (Abbas) will pay to terrorists and murderers will be automatically deducted from the Palestinian Authority’s budget."Israel says the payments are a reward and encouragement for the prisoners’ actions against it but the Palestinians say they are welfare payments to support them and their families.
07-04-2018, 04:46 PM
Israeli law cuts funds for families of Palestinian victims
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