The Palestinian Authority appears to be hiding its salaries to terrorists by removing them from the itemized budget in English that it provides the international donor community, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported on Tuesday.
According to PMW, the itemized budget in Arabic and English are identical, except for the line devoted to “Commission for Prisoners and Released,” which has appeared only in the Arabic version of the monthly reports since February this year.
The Arabic chart with PMW’s translation. Below is the English version of the budget report as it appears on the P.A. website:
PMW says that its reports on the payment of salaries to terrorists have led the United States, Canada, Australia and Holland to cut funding to the P.A. It also states that ever since it began to show donor countries that their money is being used in this way, the P.A “has been doing everything it can to confuse and distract its donors.”
In 2014, for example, PMW says that the P.A. “closed [its] Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs, and in 2015 it created the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs. In 2018, it reopened the … Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs, and in 2019 it changed its name to the Commission for Detainees’ Affairs. Now in 2020, it is trying to hide its payments by moving them once again from the P.A. to the PLO.”