Kushner and Abbas
Kushner and AbbasReuters

Although PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has reportedly made gestures that might indicate an end to PA support for terrorist prisoners and their families, a new report indicates that the gestures are merely a pretext to garner favor with the US, and that the payments will continue in more roundabout ways.

Israel Hayom, citing PA officials, reported this morning that Abbas’ meeting on Wednesday with Trump’s Middle east representatives Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt was “tense,” as the US representatives came to the meeting with a demand that the PA stop paying jailed and released terrorists and their families. According to the officials, the US representatives also came equipped with data supplied to them by Israel which detailed the amounts of payments going to terror compensation.

Abbas reportedly tried to deflect the pressure, saying that the source of the terror payments was the so-called “Prisoner Authority,” a special national fund unrelated to the PA. He also said that the PA had recently stopped paying hundreds of Hamas terrorists released in the Shalit deal, and that he intended to stop paying an additional 600 terrorists who had been given life sentences.

However, PA officials told Israel Hayom that any supposed halt in terror payments is simply a bureaucratic trick.

According to the officials, while Abbas plans to disband the “Prisoner Authority,” he will, in its stead, simply establish dozens of NGOs through which the PA will funnel money to jailed and released terrorists and their families.

The report comes as special adviser to Abbas Nabil Shaath claimed on Thursday that the terror payments in question are a “social responsibility.”

“Payments to support families are a social responsibility, to look after innocent people affected by the incarceration or killing of their loved ones as a result of the military occupation,” Shaath said in a speech he delivered in Abbas's name at the 2017 Herzliya Conference.

PA law stipulates that Arabs jailed in Israel for terrorism are eligible for 1,300 to 12,000 shekels a month. In addition, PA law grants a monthly stipend to released terrorists and families of terrorists killed while committing terror acts.