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THE UK-PA PARTNERSHIP TO REWARD TERRORISTS

MAURICE HIRSCH

In order to create the impression of bona fide activities and to give the donor countries that needed it “plausible deniability” regarding the manner in which the funds were used

The Parliament of the United Kingdom. (photo credit: REUTERS)

For years, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) knowingly funded the Palestinian Authority’s “pay for slay” terrorist reward policy.

Exposed in precise detail by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), the “pay for slay” policy is the system by which the PA pays monthly salaries to terrorist prisoners, including mass murderers, and allowances to wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorists (so called “martyrs”), including suicide bombers.

Despite having positive knowledge that the PA used a considerable amount of its financial resources to implement its terrorism-rewarding policy, the DFID, via the World Bank, provided the PA, over a seven-year period, with over £430 million to be used as the PA saw fit. While DFID has adamantly claimed no UK funds were used to fund “pay for slay”, it did so relying on narrow audit reports that cannot and do not support its assertion.

Created in 2008, the World Bank’s Palestinian Recovery and Development Program – Multi-Donor Trust Fund (PRDP-MDTF) pooled the funds of multiple donor countries, including the UK, and provided steady and reliable quarterly cash flow to the PA. As the PRDP-MDTF clearly states, the donor funds were provided to the PA “untied and unearmarked.”

In order to create the impression of bona fide activities and to give the donor countries that needed it “plausible deniability” regarding the manner in which the funds were used, auditors were employed to follow the cash flow.

However, closer examination of PRDP-MDTF documentation, including already publicly available materials, shows the opaque nature of both the program itself and the complicity of its donors.

The audits, which had particularly narrow terms of engagement, merely show that the PRDP-MDTF funds were transferred into a general budget account of the PA. The PA’s general budget is the source for the funding of “pay for slay.”

The audits did not examine what use the PA made of the funds and did not track how much of the donor funding was allocated by the PA, as part of its general budget, for “pay for slay.”

While the full extent of the program was exposed only in 2011 by PMW, both DFID and the World Bank knew the details of “pay for slay” prior to the creation of the PRDP-MDTF.

Already in 2007, a World Bank report provided clear details of the policy. Referring to the monthly PA salary payments to the terrorists, the report said that it is “the most generous PA program. It is also the most expensive social protection program….” As regards the payments to the wounded terrorists and the families of the dead terrorists, the report said that “as a safety net program, the Fund for Families of Martyrs and the Injured is generous” and that “the level of resources devoted to the Fund for Martyrs and the Injured does not seem justified from a welfare or fiscal perspective.”

Accordingly, when the UK provided the PA with “untied and unearmarked” money, it had positive knowledge that it was effectively giving the PA the cash it needed to make its “pay for slay” payments.

WHEN KAY WILSON – the British-born Israeli survivor of a brutal 2011 machete attack that left her with multiple stab wounds and broken bones and left her close friend Kristine Luken dead – asked why the DFID was funding the financial rewards the PA pays to the two terrorists who attacked her, she was fobbed off with empty assurances of “robust safeguards” that ensure that no DFID funding went to “pay for slay.”

It is most likely the revelation that DFID had given baseless answers that motivated it to reject the requests of UK Lawyers for Israel to provide additional audit reports of the UK donations to the PRDP-MDTF.

Rejecting the position of DFID, the UK information commissioner recently ruled to force DFID to divulge the additional documentation. In doing so the commissioner also rejected the argument made by DFID that it had “consulted the PA about the request and the PA had made it clear that it did not consent to this information being disclosed.”

In the decision, the commissioner ruled that “whilst disclosure of the withheld information will not provide the full picture regarding the auditing of these particular funds, it will contribute towards it, which, given the concerns about how such funds may have allegedly been used, the commissioner considers to be a compelling argument.”

Unless they positively seek to be party to the program, international donors should stop ignoring the repeated statements by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who has said that “even if we have only a penny left, it will only be spent on the families of the martyrs and the prisoners, and only afterwards will it be spent on the rest of the people,” and should condition any aid to the PA, as does the United States, on the abolition of “pay for slay.”

The writer is the head of legal strategies for Palestinian Media Watch. He served for 19 years in the IDF Military Advocate-General Corps. In his last position he served as director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria. Tweets @mauricehirsch4

Court rejects illegal migrants’ appeal, paving way for expulsion

AFP

Filipino woman worker who overstayed her visa and her Israeli-born son deported Sunday night, as Israel removes 600 illegal migrant faimiles

Ben Gurion Airport

A Filipino migrant worker and her Israeli-born teenage son were preparing to be deported from the Jewish state on Sunday night after successive court appeals failed, an NGO lobbying for children of illegal migrants said.

Rosemarie Perez was arrested by immigration officials along with her 13-year-old son Rohan on Tuesday for overstaying her work visa.

On Sunday night the two were under escort at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, waiting to be put aboard an El Al flight to Hong Kong, from where they would fly to Manila, said Beth Franco of United Children of Israel (UCI).

“They’re flying out tonight,” she said, adding that Rohan had never been outside the Jewish state before.

Earlier Sunday a court rejected Perez’s latest plea to stay, immigration authority spokeswoman Sabine Haddad told AFP.

“She has been here illegally for 10 years,” Haddad said.

UCI argues that it is cruel to send Rohan — and other children of migrants — to a country they have never seen and where they do not speak the language.

Last week migrants, their children and native Israelis staged a protest in Tel Aviv against the policy of deporting Israeli-born children of migrants.

Ronan has “never been to the Philipines, he doesn’t speak the language, Hebrew is his first tongue,” said Franco, adding that it had been his dream to serve in the Israeli army.

“He sees this country as his own,” she said.

Haddad could not immediately confirm that the mother and son were on their way out of the country.

She said that Rohan’s father was a Turkish national who left Israel several years ago.

Many of the 28,000 — largely Christian — Filipinos in Israel arrived to work as caregivers and domestic workers, but according to UCI, some 600 families could now face expulsion after losing their residency status.

Hezbollah supporter sent to prison in US

Elad Benari

Lebanese businessman designated as financial supporter of Hezbollah sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to forfeit $50 million.

Hezbollah supporters

A Lebanese businessman designated by US authorities as an important financial supporter of the Hezbollah terrorist organization was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to forfeit $50 million, the Justice Department said Thursday, according to AFP.

Kassim Tajideen, 63, pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiracy to launder money as part of a scheme to evade US sanctions.

He was named a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in May 2009 by the Treasury Department based on tens of millions of dollars in financial support given to Hezbollah.

In a plea, Tajideen admitted to conspiring with at least five other people to conduct more than $50 million in transactions with US businesses, in violation of prohibitions barring his involvement with US persons or companies.

“His sentencing and the $50 million forfeiture in this case are just the latest public examples of the Department of Justice’s ongoing efforts to disrupt and dismantle Hezbollah and its support networks,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski, according to AFP.

Tajideen, who operated a network of businesses in Lebanon and Africa, was extradited to the United States in March 2017 after his arrest overseas.

Hezbollah has been a US designated terrorist group since 1997 and is regularly sanctioned by Washington.

Last month, the US Treasury placed two Hezbollah members of Lebanon’s parliament on its sanctions blacklist, marking the first time Washington has taken aim at the Iran-allied group’s elected politicians.

Last October, President Donald Trump signed new sanctions targeting Hezbollah.

A week earlier, five groups, including Hezbollah, were designated as transnational criminal organizations to target with tougher investigations and prosecutions.

Before that, the Treasury sanctioned one of the financiers of Hezbollah and its representative to Iran, as well as five entities based in Europe.

Israel’s Interior Security Minister Advocates Right of Jews to Pray on Temple Mount in Jerusalem

Benjamin Kerstein

Jewish worshippers visiting Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad.

Israel’s interior security minister endorsed changing the status quo on the Temple Mount in an interview on Tuesday, calling it an “injustice” that Jews are allowed to enter the holy site but are prohibited from praying.

Speaking during a radio interview in the wake of violent clashes on the Mount after Jewish worshippers sought to enter on the Tisha B’Av fast on Sunday, Israeli news site Walla quoted the minister, Gilad Erdan, as saying, “I think there’s an injustice in the status quo that has existed there since ’67, and we must act in order to change it.”

According to the status quo set up after the Six Day War in 1967, the Islamic Waqf exercises authority over the holy site. In recent years a “Temple Mount activist” movement has arisen among religious Jews that seeks to secure prayer rights and equal access to the Mount for Jewish worshipers.

Erdan — a key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — declared that the status quo should be changed “in order that Jews in the future can pray on the Temple Mount, which is the holiest place to the Jewish people, and the third holiest place in Islam.”

“We must work to reach a situation in which the Jews can also pray,” he added. “But we must achieve this through political arrangements and not by force.”

Aviv Tatarsky of the left-wing group Ir Amim, which seeks to promote coexistence in Jerusalem, criticized Erdan’s statement, saying, “Most of the Israeli public respects the division in which Jewish worship takes place at the Western Wall and Muslim worship takes place on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.”

The public, he added, “Understands that this is the right situation until a political settlement is reached.”

Erdan, Tatarsky said, “prefers to join an extreme minority of the national religious community and strengthen it in exchange for personal political profit.”