by Hugh Fitzgerald
The Palestinian Authority has been whining about Israel cruelly reneging on its responsibility to vaccinate the Palestinian population. When Israel matter-of-factly points out that the responsibility for health care for the Palestinians rests with their own leaders, this has little effect on the mainstream media, which continues to run stories that repeat the Palestinian complaint. All those reporters and editors need do – it’s a one-minute Internet search – is take a look at the Oslo Accords (1995), Annex III, Article 17, which unambiguously transfers the responsibility for Palestinian health care, including vaccinations, to the Palestinian Authority:
ARTICLE 17
Health
1. Powers and responsibilities in the sphere of Health in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will be transferred to the Palestinian side, including the health insurance system.
2. The Palestinian side shall continue to apply the present standards of vaccination of Palestinians and shall improve them according to internationally accepted standards in the field, taking into account WHO recommendations. In this regard, the Palestinian side shall continue the vaccination of the population with the vaccines listed in Schedule 3.
The Palestinian Authority did nothing to prepare for the pandemic. It did not order any vaccines, no doubt assuming that it could rely on Israel — perhaps under pressure — to take care of that. It did not husband its resources to pay for vaccines, either. Instead, in 2020 it continued its infamous and expensive “Pay-For-Slay” program, whereby the PA government gives terrorists, if imprisoned by Israel, and to their families, if they had been killed during their attacks, generous monthly payments.
During 2020, the PA spent more than $150 million on its Pay-For-Slay program. That amount would have paid for enough vaccines for every Palestinian man, woman, and child. The PA made a choice: it preferred to reward past acts of terror, and to incentivize future acts, rather than to pay for vaccinations for its own population.
Now we learn that the PA has decided to give the two terrorist cousins, Amjad and Hakim Awad, who butchered with knives the five members of the Fogel family – the father Ehud, the mother Ruth, and the three little children, Yoav (11), Eldad (4), and Hadas (3 months) — a 50% raise. They will each now be receiving $1,806 a month. The average wage for a Palestinian worker of similar educational background to the two terrorist cousins is $430 a month. So they will be receiving more than four times as much for having murdered the Fogel family as they would have received from working. It’s quite a reward for murderers, and quite an incentive for many Palestinians at the low end of the wage scale to go and do likewise. And if you murder enough Israelis, you may find the PA – or Hamas in Gaza – has named a square or a street after you.
What will the Biden Administration make of this raise in pay for two terrorists who butchered four members of a family while they were sleeping? Anything? Nothing?
The Biden Administration has said more than once it plans to renew America’s financial support for the PA. One of the main reasons why the Trump Administration ended that aid was the PA’s refusal to discontinue its “Pay-For-Slay” program, which was a clear violation of the 2018 Taylor Force Act. The Taylor Force Act is an Act of the U.S. Congress to stop American economic aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) until the PA ceases paying stipends through the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund to individuals who commit acts of terrorism and to the families of deceased terrorists. How does the PA, how does the Biden Administration, hope to avoid the provisions of this act? Some have said that the PA is going to relabel its payments, representing them as subsidies to the poor rather than as rewards to terrorists. The terrorists themselves, if still alive and imprisoned, are poor because, as prisoners, they have no gainful employment. And in those cases where a terrorist is killed during his attack, whether by the Israelis or as a result of a suicide bombing, his family is left without one of its breadwinners. The PA payments can be presented as a way to make up the difference. But this sleight-of-word will fool no one. It’s still, behind the relabelling, the same old “Pay-For-Slay” program. Families of Palestinians who have been imprisoned as common criminals will not be receiving the payments we are now being told are prompted only by the desire to help poorer families with a member in prison. The monthly stipends will still be confined to those who are imprisoned as terrorists, or to the families of dead terrorists.
This 50% rise in the amount being given to the Awad cousins, found guilty of a particularly atrocious act – butchering in their sleep the five members of the Fogel family, including two small children and a baby – cries out for comment, for denunciation, by the Biden Administration. Tony Blinken, if not Biden himself, should point to this grotesque “raise” as a reminder as to why the Americans will not be be renewing its aid to the PA until the “Pay-For-Slay” program has been shut own. Here’s what he should say: “We would like to help the Palestinians, but we cannot possibly do so as long as this Pay-For-Slay program continues. That program both rewards past terrorism and incentivizes future terrorism. And it is even more shameful, and horrifying that the PA, instead of announcing it is ending the Pay-For-Slay Program, as it must for American aid to be renewed, has instead decided to raise by 50% the amount the murderers of the Fogel family — a particularly ghastly crime — receive every month. This cannot be tolerated. Until the Pay-For-Slay program is fully discontinued, to our satisfaction and that of Congress, there will be no renewal of American aid. And furthermore, we will be asking Congress to add another requirement to the Taylor Force Act. To wit: “Even in the absence of any financial rewards, any non-monetary recognition or honor that the Palestinian Authority chooses to bestow on terrorists, including but not limited to naming squares and streets after them, will be sufficient reason to prevent a renewal of American aid.”
That kind of warning should get the attention of Mahmoud Abbas and his rapacious henchmen in Ramallah. But what can they do? They don’t want to be seen as yielding to American demands for the sake of getting the spigot of American aid again turned on. They have their principles, after all. But those grifters and grafters in the PA dearly long for that generous American aid to be renewed, so that they can skim off their shares. Decisions, decisions. As Mr. Dooley used to say, “when someone says it’s not the money, it’s the principle –it’s the money.”
First published in Jihad Watch.
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One Response
Perhaps an American NGO, the MacArthur Foundation comes immediately to mind, could institute a “pay for spay” program among the Palestinian women, thereby “….building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.”