Last week, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas announced Hussein al-Sheikh, longtime insider and convicted terrorist, as his designated successor. In April, al-Sheikh told U.S. officials that the PA had officially stopped its hideous “pay for slay” program — cash rewards for the cold-blooded killing of Americans and Israelis. Yet last Saturday, just hours before his elevation was announced, the PA quietly disbursed yet another round of murderer salaries and stipends.
The mechanics of the program are grotesquely simple. The longer the prison sentence, the larger the stipend; the bloodier the attack, the richer the reward. Even when Ramallah slashes salaries for ordinary civil servants, payments to convicted killers and their families continue. Roughly 8 percent of the PA’s annual budget funds this obscene incentive system.
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