Andrew Tobin of the Washington Free Beacon highlights inconvenient news for the Biden administration.
Days after the Biden administration gave its blessing to a newly formed Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank, the PA handed out dozens of bonus payments for security forces who were involved in attacks on Israelis.
According to the PA’s official news outlets, the Palestinian General Intelligence Service on April 4 provided a grant to 36 families of agency officials who died or were imprisoned as a result of their involvement in anti-Israel security crimes. The reports did not identify the recipients of the grant or its amount, but the purpose was clear.
“Service Director in Jenin Adnan Abu Aisheh said that the message of the service, under the instructions of its leader, Majed Faraj, is to emphasize what President Mahmoud Abbas has said again and again—that if we are left with one penny, it will be paid to the families of the martyrs and the prisoners,” reported the PA’s WAFA news agency and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida daily.
The grant is the latest blow to President Joe Biden’s nascent peace plan, which involves empowering a “revitalized” PA to govern a future Palestinian state that can coexist alongside Israel. Officials in the Biden administration have demanded that the PA be reformed and then given administrative control over Gaza following Israel’s war against Hamas, the rival Palestinian faction that rules the territory.
But since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack, which sparked the Gaza war, the PA has avoided condemning the atrocities of that day and has doubled down on its longstanding policy of paying generous salaries to terrorists and their families. The PA has committed to expanding the “pay for slay” annual budget by tens of millions of dollars to cover Palestinians who were killed or captured while carrying out Oct. 7 atrocities and the resulting war.