There are two ways of finding employment with the Palestinian Authority. The first requires you file an application and take the necessary exams. Assuming the P.A. decides to hire you, though, the pay is not too good.
The other way to find employment with the P.A. is to carry out a terror attack against Israelis. Ideally, you should kill at least one Israeli, get arrested, stand trial in Israel and be sentenced to prison. Then the moment you are sentenced, the P.A. will issue your employee card. Your salary is dependent on the length of your prison sentences, with longer sentences commanding higher pay.
All this goes on right under our noses. Under the 2018 budget, authorized by the government in Ramallah just two months ago, 1.2 billion shekels ($340 million) will go to terrorists convicted by Israeli courts and their families.
The Knesset has decided to put an end to that, at least as far as concerns the tax revenues that Israel transfers to the P.A.
Yesh Atid Party Knesset member Elazar Stern and I have joined other lawmakers in initiating legislation that will require the government, and in particular, the finance and defense ministers, to deduct the funds Ramallah pays imprisoned terrorists and their relatives from tax revenues the P.A. gets from Israel. We must not allow Israel to become a link in the chain of these payments to terrorists.
The fact is that messages are being sent from entities in Israel to entities in various countries who wish to cut off the money routes to the P.A., warning them that the P.A. will collapse if the aid comes to an end. It was only a few days ago that I heard from a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Dutch parliament that Israeli officials had made it clear the Netherlands should not stop funding the P.A.
We must not resuscitate the P.A. with funds that are spent on attacking us. When the P.A. signs off on salaries to terrorists, it dips the quill of its pen in the blood of our dead, who were murdered at the hands of those very same terrorists.
Avi Dichter is a Knesset member for the Likud Party. He was previously head of the Shin Bet security agency, public-security minister and home-front defense minister.
