US Money to Convicted Terrorists; US Training to Aspiring Terrorists

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C) alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (L) and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, July 26, 2023. Photo: Reuters/Palestinian Presidents’ Office

After Palestinian Media Watch exposed in the US Congress in 2011 that the Palestinian Authority (PA) pays salaries to terrorists, most Western countries eventually cut off funding of the PA’s general budget and instead gave money for specific projects, such as education. However, one Palestinian framework has remained a recipient of Western money and was also excluded from the limitations of the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits American funding of the PA. That framework is the PA Security Forces.

The US State Department said that in 2002, it provided $45 million to the PA security sector:

The U.S. government plans to provide an additional $75 million in economic assistance to the Palestinian people this year. Additionally, the United States is also providing $45 million for programs to support the security sector including important improvements to the rule of law.

[U.S. Department of State website, March 26, 2022]

Now the PA reports that the Western-funded General Intelligence Service of the PA Security Forces gave a special grant to precisely those terrorists whom the West is trying not to fund — the convicted Palestinian terrorists and dead terrorists. Worse still, the recipients are terrorists who are members of the PA General Intelligence Service who used their training and weapons from the US to perpetrate terror against Israel. The decision to give the grants to terrorists was made by the head of the PA General Intelligence Service, Majed Faraj, who is presented internationally as a “moderate” who cooperates with Israel in fighting Palestinian terror. Yet instead of punishing those members of the PA Security Forces who turned to terror, Faraj decided to give them an extra reward:

The [PA] General Intelligence Service in Jenin provided a grant to the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners [i.e., terrorists] from the service’s ranks in the district …

A delegation from the service provided the grant to 25 families from among the Martyrs’ families and 11 families from among the prisoners’ families from the General Intelligence ranks.
[PA General Intelligence] Service Director in Jenin Adnan Abu Aisheh said that the message of the service, under the instructions of its leader [Head of PA General Intelligence] 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. [emphasis added]

[WAFA, official PA news agency, April 4, 2024; official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 5, 2024]

Official PA TV also reported on the special grants to the members of the PA Security Forces-turned-terrorists’ families:

News flash on screen: “The [PA] General Intelligence [Service] gives a grant to the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners from its members in the Jenin district.”

[Official PA TV, April 5, 2024]

In addition to these direct payments from the US-funded budget to terrorists, new recruits to the PA security forces train “at a U.S.-funded training center” [Washington Post, March 5, 2024].

Palestinian Media Watch recently exposed that in addition to those receiving special grants, the PA forces in general are profoundly involved in terrorism, as admitted by a PA official:

More than roughly 63-65% of the number of Martyrs in the West Bank, in the daily confrontations, are members of the Fatah Movement. And most of them are members of the [PA] Security Forces or their sons … The ones who are being pursued in the streets, arrested, and imprisoned are the Palestinian Security Forces officers. [emphasis added]

[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, June 14, 2023]

Fatah also corroborated the PA TV report:

More than two-thirds of the Martyrs in the West Bank over [the last] year-and-a-half belong to the Fatah Movement and the PA … More than 355 of our Palestinian people’s prisoners inside the prisons are from the Palestinian [PA] Security Forces — in other words, the PA’s soldiers.

[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, May 27, 2023]

To sum up, the US-funded PA General Intelligence Service is giving grants to convicted terrorists from among the General Intelligence, and new recruits to the PA Security Forces are being trained in US-built facilities. In other words, it appears that money is going directly to convicted terrorists while the US is training aspiring terrorists.

The authors are the founder and senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.

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