Special to WorldTribune.com

RAMALLAH — The Palestinian Authority plans to switch its source of
funding to convicted killers of Israelis and Americans.

The PA has drafted plans to transfer a ministry to the Palestine
Liberation Organization. The plans called for the Prisoner Affairs Ministry
to leave PA auspices amid criticism of funding to Palestinian insurgents,
including those responsible for mass-casualty attacks.

“This would be a change of name and nothing more, which would in no way
affect the roles and duties that the ministry fulfilled,” the official PA
daily Al Ayam reported.

In a report on June 1, Al Ayam quoted PA sources as saying that the transfer of the ministry to the PLO was meant to assuage the European Union and the United States. Both have questioned direct PA funding of insurgents in Israeli prisons, including those convicted of killing Americans and Israelis.

“The new situation would make possible the provision of new resources to
support prisoners’ issues, without allowing forces of the U.S. Congress or
some European parliaments to attempt to blackmail the PA or to take steps
against it,” Al Ayam said.

In April 2014, Congress questioned PA funding to insurgents
jailed in Israel. During a House subcommittee hearing on April 29, a senior
State Department official acknowledged the funding, but said the
administration of President Barack Obama would not act.

“I would be hard pressed to say which of the programs for the PA we
should cut,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Anne Patterson, a former
ambassador to Egypt, said. “I would be very hard pressed to say that.”

For its part, the PA has termed the funds to the insurgents as
“salaries.” Al Ayam said the transfer of authority from the PA to the PLO
would help jailed Palestinian insurgents while ” meeting their demands and
defending their rights more efficiently and flexibly.”

An Israeli-based monitoring group, Palestinian Media Watch, said PA
salaries to insurgents amounted to $103 million in 2014 and was expected to
reach $130 million in 2014. The group has relayed the figures to Congress.

“Apparently, this new authority will be set up shortly and the prisoners
will continue to receive the same financial salaries and other benefits,”
PMW said on June 3.

Senior PA officials said chairman Mahmoud Abbas has increased funding to
the Palestinian insurgents. PA Deputy Prisoners Affairs Minister Ziyad Abu
Ein said Abbas would remain in charge of the allocation.

“The [Palestinian] leadership wants to keep this holy issue away from
the influence of the donor countries, the interference of the donor
countries, and the occasional negative influence of the donor countries, by
giving it [the prisoner issue] its holiness and assigning it to the
leadership of the struggle of our Palestinian people,” Abu Ein told PA
television on June 1.

  Anne Patterson, but will still send funds to imprisoned terrorists, Palestinians shift delivery method, PLO, U.S. Congress