According to official Palestinian data, in 2019 the Palestinian Authority paid terrorists imprisoned in Israel NIS 517.4 million, compared with 502 million it spent in 2018. By January 2020, 77.1 million had already been paid. The PA continues to pay salaries to terrorists arrested in Israel and to the families of dead terrorists in the face of economic hardship during the Corona, despite the outrage that these payments are causing in the world and in Israel, and despite economic measures being taken against the PA. Trump's peace is repealing the law under which the authority makes the payments, as a prerequisite for the establishment of a Palestinian state. 

Israel, for its part, is supposed to apply the law to offset terrorists' salaries from 2018, which, on a monthly basis, deducted from the taxes it levies for the PA the 12th of the amount paid in the previous year as salaries to terrorists or their families. The Palestinians protested the decision and refused to accept their money as long as Israel refused to transfer the full amount, but eventually the parties reached an agreement that the PA would receive the money less the said amount. 

However, even though more than three months have passed in 2020, the Israeli cabinet has not yet discussed the implementation of the law for 2020, so the money for January, February and March may not be deducted yet. The security cabinet must approve the amount spent by the Palestinian Authority in 2019 on paying terrorist salaries and start deducting it immediately from the money transferred to the PA on a monthly basis.

Against the backdrop of the Corona eruption, the Palestinian Authority asked Israel to transfer the funds it had paid for terrorists' salary payments (NIS 650 million, according to Palestinian sources). This request was rejected, but instead, on March 22, Israel handed over NIS 120 million, which was in dispute between the parties, as part of a contingency plan to combat the virus. Despite this, and despite the cooperation in the fight against Corona, the authority continues to spread allegations against Israel, accusing it of spreading the disease. It is clear that if the PA does need additional financial resources to combat the epidemic, it can stop payments to terrorists. 

Implementing economic measures against the PA for the loss of terrorism by providing adequate salaries in advance (increasing according to the severity of the offense) to Palestinians who kill Israelis did not, contrary to warnings from leftists in Israel and around the world, result in the PA collapsing and ending the security cooperation with Israel. In the past, these threats from the PA are not real, because the PA's existence is the most important achievement of the Palestinian national movement and because security cooperation with Israel is far more beneficial to the Palestinian Authority, which is facing the Hamas threat, than Israel.

Other countries need to condone the PA's assistance in stopping the salaries of terrorists and abolishing the Palestinian law on which payments are made. When more European donors adopt this policy, the chances of the PA's conduct will change.

Brigadier General (res.) Yossi Kupervser is a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public and State Affairs