PA studies details of each terrorist act before issuing salaries
By Edwin Black
The Times of Israel website
Thousands of documents, newly obtained by this reporter through a lawsuit to unseal court-protected files, demonstrate that these payouts are not blind automated payments. Rather, senior Palestinian Authority officials as high as President Mahmoud Abbas scrutinize the details of each case, the specific carnage caused, and the personal details of each terrorist act before approving salaries and awarding honorary ranks in either the PA government or the military.
Ministry of Prisoners spokesman Amr Nasser has explained, “We are very proud of this program and we have nothing to hide.” Nonetheless, in response to the international furor over the payments, the Palestinian Authority announced last year it would replace the Ministry of Prisoners with an outside PLO commission known as the Higher National Commission for Prisoners and Detainees Affairs.
The PA is dependent upon foreign donor countries to supply much of its budget, which now exceeds $4.2 billion annually. About ten percent of the PA budget, more than $400 million, is contributed annually by United States foreign aid. The US and many other countries have enacted laws forbidding any payments when the monies directly or indirectly support or encourage terrorism.
The interdepartmental bureaucratic notations the Palestinian Authority has recorded on each terrorist before approving the level of salaried compensation is extensive. For example, one prominent case involved Ahmad Talab Mustafa Barghouti, who personally coordinated numerous terrorist acts.
These included a January 2002 shooting spree on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, killing two and wounding 37; a March 2002 shooting spree at a Tel Aviv restaurant, killing three and wounding 31; and finally a March 27, 2002 attempt to smuggle an explosive suicide belt in an ambulance. The Israel Defense Forces arrested Barghouti. On July 30, 2002, a military court concluded that he was responsible for murdering 12 Israelis, and he was sentenced to 13 life sentences.
Steinitz Urges western nations to give more arms to Kurds, Jordan
By Shadia Nasralla
The Jerusalem Post, Page 2
MUNICH (Reuters) – Western states should provide more weapons to Jordan, Egypt, Kurdish forces and certain opposition forces in Syria, Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said on the sidelines of the Munich Security conference on Friday.
Israeli officials had previously stopped short of making such explicit calls, citing concern that such groups would face added hostility by being publicly associated with Israel.
To promote unity, Lebanon removes political banners, a legacy of civil war
By Oliver Holmes
The Jerusalem Post, Page 3
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon has begun removing political posters and party banners from neighborhoods of the capital in a move to unify a country still divided from a civil war, following an agreement between Hezbollah and its rivals.
Beirut is fragmented into fiefdoms where political banners and photographs of dead fighters and warlords have marked territory controlled by various groups since the start of the civil war that raged from 1975 and 1990.
In major Friday operation Egypt kills 47 Sinai terrorists
By Reuters
The Jerusalem Post, Page 3
CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian security forces killed 47 Islamist terrorists in the country's Northern Sinai on Friday in one of the biggest operations in the region in months, security sources said.
Apache helicopters killed 27 gunmen from the Sinai Province group, which pledges allegiance to Islamic State, the sources said.
Hours later, soldiers shot and killed 20 gunmen, said the sources.
Morocco’s Jewish cemetery project lauded at Paris event
By JTA
The Times of Israel website
Moroccan Jews touted their country’s efforts to preserve Jewish cemeteries at the opening of an exhibition on Morocco in Paris.
The preservation efforts, launched in 2010, have restored at least 167 Jewish burial sites and were celebrated during the Feb. 1 opening of the “Contemporary Morocco” exhibition at the French capital’s Arab World Institute, the news site leconomiste.com reported Wednesday.
Serge Berdugo, president of the Council of Moroccan Jewish Communities and a special envoy to King Mohammed VI of Morocco, said the project was part of “a vision and practice which have been applied, for tolerance, dialogue and respect which are the exact opposite of extremists’ schemes.”
Berdugo spoke during a showcase, “Rehabilitation of Morocco’s Jewish Cemeteries – Life Houses,” attended by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Jack Lang, the Jewish former minister of culture and currently the head of the Arab World Institute.
Among the officials representing the kingdom at the event was Princess Lalla Meryem. She received a letter signed by 27 Moroccan rabbis thanking the kingdom and its monarch for the renovation project.
Also during the event, Meryem presented Morocco’s Order of the Throne to three Morocco-born Frenchmen, each representing a different monotheistic religion.
The Jewish recipient was Michel Serfaty, rabbi of the Ris-Orangis municipality south of Paris. The Christian and Muslim recipients were Michel Dubost, the bishop of Evry near Paris, and Khalil Merroun, the rector of Evry’s mosque.