Salaries to terrorists more important than education and salaries to teachers: The teachers in the Palestinian Authority are striking because the PA is not paying their full wages and has reneged on promises it made to them in 2022. As a result, according to different reports, over a million Palestinian children have not had school since the strike started on 5th of February, 2023.
Instead of paying the salaries of the teachers, the PA prioritizes paying hundreds of millions of shekels to terrorists. As Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says, time after time: “Even if I’m left with one penny, I’ll pay it to the families of the Martyrs, to the prisoners, and to the wounded.”
Referring to the strike, Muwaffaq Matar, Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily summarized the PA approach – Blame Israel!
According to Matar, the teachers’ strike is due to the implementation of the Israeli Anti Pay-for-Slay law, the law that penalizes the PA for paying huge monthly cash rewards to terrorists:
“The wheels of educational life are put on strike now and then, under the headline of ‘the right to strike’ or abstaining from providing services to the citizens for particular periods of time until the realization of material (monetary) demands [parentheses in source]. This is even though everyone knows that all the public sector ([PA] government) employees [parentheses in source] are suffering as a result of how the occupation authorities are stealing the Palestinian tax money, which is the backbone of the PA government employees’ salaries, and as a result of the deduction of hundreds of millions of [Israeli] shekels in order to dissuade the national Palestinian leadership from providing allowances to the prisoners and the Martyrs’ relatives.”
While the PA is peddling its “financial crisis” narrative on a daily basis, an examination of the financial reports published by the PA Ministry of Finance demonstrates the opposite of the PA propaganda. As can be seen in the following table, for the years 2018 – the year Israel passed its Anti Pay-for-Slay law - through 2022, the overall income of the PA grew by 3.5 billion shekels. The vast majority of that growth - 2.5 billion shekels - actually came from the taxes Israel collects and doesn’t withhold.
As part of its Pay-for-Slay policy, the PA pays monthly salaries to imprisoned terrorists and released terrorists, simply as a reward for their participation in terror. The PA also pays monthly allowances to injured terrorists and to the families of dead terrorists. Cumulatively, PMW estimates that in 2022 the PA spent no less than 865 million shekels paying these terror rewards.
If the PA would stop incentivizing terror by rewarding terrorists, the PA and the Palestinian economy would enjoy a four-fold windfall. First, the PA would save the hundreds of millions of shekels it pays annually to terrorists and their families. Next, the US, the Netherlands, Australia and others who cut funding would be able to renew their aid to the PA, bringing in hundreds of millions of additional dollars. Israel could stop implementing its law, thereby inflating the PA coffers by hundreds of millions shekels annually. Finally, if the PA also stopped promoting terror, in the absence of constant violence, investment activity in the PA could potentially boom.
Despite the heavy cost, the PA and its leader Abbas refuse to cease and desist from promoting, inciting and rewarding terror. As PA Chairman Abbas is repeatedly quoted saying:
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: “We emphasize that the issue of the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners is at the top of our list of priorities, and any amount [of money] we have will be earmarked for them.”
This promise – that support for terrorists is more important than anything else – has been repeated recently by a PLO official and a Fatah official:
“PLO Executive Committee member [and Palestinian Liberation Front Secretary-General] Wasel Abu Yusuf… emphasized that the Palestinian leadership will continue to stand alongside the prisoners and their families, and that it always emphasizes that it will not neglect their cause, and that even if only one penny is left, it will be given to their families and to the Martyrs’ families.”
“In the speech he gave… on behalf of Fatah, PLO Executive Committee Secretary and Fatah Central Committee member Hussein Al-Sheikh emphasized the leadership’s permanent and firm commitment, according to which our Martyrs, our prisoners, and their families are a red line – ‘Even if we are left with one penny, it will be paid to the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners.’”
True to his promise, Abbas has sanctified the PA terror reward payments even if it means punishing the PA’s teachers, the PA’s doctors, or even Palestinian cancer patients.