The Palestinian Authority has asked the US government to verify that it is following through on a change to a welfare policy seen as incentivizing terrorism, the Times of Israel reported on Friday, citing officials from the US and the PA. In a letter sent Wednesday to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, invited a US delegation to visit Ramallah starting June 1 to confirm the changes.
The move comes after Abbas signed a decree in February scrapping a longstanding policy that provided payments to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails based on the length of their sentences. Now, aid will now be based on financial need, a step intended to meet the requirements of a 2018 US law that bars direct economic aid to the Palestinian Authority unless four conditions are met, including an end to incentive-based payments to individuals involved in violence against Israelis.
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Though the decree was issued in February, Palestinian officials said implementation has been delayed due to logistical issues and Israel’s withholding of tax revenues. Payments made after the decree were for months prior, they said, and full enforcement is expected within the next two months.
“This is a major step demonstrating that this is not just talk, but action,” the Times of Israel quoted the Palestinian official as saying.
Other than rescinding the policy of payments based on prison sentences and stopping those payments, the other requirements for the PA under the 2018 law are that the PA publicly denounce terror and work to curb terrorism in the West Bank.