Imprisoned Palestinian terrorists are paid up to $3,400 a month by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which receives much of it’s funding from American and other Western countries, according to documents and other materials obtained by an investigative journalist.
Millions of Palestinian government dollars have been spent on payments to terrorists currently incarcerated by Israel, according to investigative reporter and writer Edwin Black.
Money donated to the PA from the United States and others often is not specifically earmarked, meaning these funds could have been spent on terrorist salaries, according to Black, who reports on these terror payments in his new book, Financing the Flames: How Tax-Exempt and Public Money Fuel a Culture of Confrontation and Terror in Israel.
"This money is fungible, funded by donor countries, by the United States of America, by the European Union, by France, by Denmark, and they all know it," Black said at a recent book release event.
Payments to these terrorists have reached almost $10 million a month in some years and constitute about six percent of the PA’s budget, according to the PA Ministry of Finance’s records.
Black cites primary documents and interviews detailing how Western funds are fueling a Palestinian government that is marred by corruption and an institutional propensity toward violence.
The payments to terrorists are made under a 2011 Palestinian law that grants payment to "anyone imprisoned in the occupation’s prisons [i.e., Israel] as a result of his participation in the struggle against the occupation," according to law as reported by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).
Terrorists' salaries are provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Prison Affairs and the semi-official Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, which channels and handles certain payments funneled from the ministry, according to Palestine’s Ministry of Detainees and regional reports on the payment system.
"If an individual commits an act of terrorism against innocent civilians, that person automatically goes on a PA salary and the salary escalates according to the amount of dead people and carnage that the person has been found guilty of and the amount of time he’s spending in prison," Black said.
The PA gave the Prisoners Club around $6 million between 2002 and 2004, according to PA Ministry of Finance documents cited by Black.
"These are the best salaries in all the PA," said Black, whose newly released book traces how public funds are fueling violence in the Palestinian territories. "You can go from rags to riches and from being a nobody to instant fame just by killing an innocent civilian in Israel."
These salaries follow what Black dubbed a "sliding scale," meaning that a terrorist can make more money by killing large numbers of civilians.
Those imprisoned for up to three years receive a stipend of 1,400 shekels or around $400 a month, according to a sliding scale published by PMW.
Those incarcerated for up to five years are entitled to around $560 a month, while those imprisoned for life—as many Palestinian terrorists are—can receive around $1,690 a month, according to the sliding scale.
These payments are a priority to the PA and always arrive on time despite the political group’s dire financial situation.
"These are considered to be not only obligatory payments by the PA, they are joyous priorities," Black said. "If they have $1,000 in their pocket and there are starving families, they will pay the salaries of the prisoners first."
The PA’s expenses could constitute of violation of U.S. laws governing how foreign aid money is spent, according to Black.
"In the U.S., it’s a violation of law for any of our funding and financial assistance to benefit terrorism," he said. "The families of the victims know it, the leadership in Israel knows it, the foreign ministries" also know.
"Who doesn’t know it? Congress doesn’t know it," Black said. "The American people don’t know it."