PA says pressure won’t cut spigot of payments to prisoners

The families of Palestinians in Israeli jails will continue to receive salaries despite Israeli measures aimed at cracking down on the policy, Palestinian Authority Prisoners Affairs Commission chairman Qadri Abu Bakr says.

After an Israeli military edict that criminalized Palestinian Authority funding for convicted terrorists, several banks closed or froze prisoners’ accounts in the West Bank and Jordan in early May.

Efforts are also being made to create a financial institution directly controlled by the Palestine Liberation Organization to handle the prisoners’ accounts, rather than placing them in private banks, Abu Bakr says. This measure, Abu Bakr indicates, would allow them to avoid Israeli sanctions.

The Israeli government has long opposed the hundreds of millions of dollars which the PLO pays to Palestinians convicted of terrorism and their families every year, which Israel says encourages terror.

— Aaron Boxerman