If Abbas was sincere in sending firefighting assistance last week, now is the perfect time to demonstrate this change in policy.
“While Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas was accepting praise for sending Palestinian firefighters to help put out fires in Israel, the PA Finance Ministry was busy doing the paper work to start paying salaries to the Palestinian arsonists who were arrested for setting many of those same fires,” Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), stated in an editorial published Thursday in The Jerusalem Post.
Indeed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a special phone call to Abbas last week, thanking him for sending help to help quell the wildfires blazing across the country, mostly as a result of Arab arson.
There were no fatalities, however, hundreds, including a six-week-old baby, were treated for smoke inhalation.
As Marcus points out, 23 suspects were arrested to date in connection with the hundreds of fires that raged throughout Israel, destroying several hundred homes as well as 32,000 acres of forests and national parks.
“Every fire that was the result of arson or incitement to arson is terror in every way and we’ll treat it as such. Anyone who tries to burn parts of the State of Israel will be severely punished,” Netanyahu had stated.
As PMW has noted on several occasions, the PA not only incites violence against Israelis and glorifies jihad; it also pays salaries to anyone who commits an act of terror against the Jewish state.
“It is not only arson-terrorists who receive a PA salary. All Palestinian, Israeli Arab and Arab terrorists from any country who are imprisoned are rewarded with high salaries from the PA,” Marcus said in the Post editorial. “Since the PA automatically includes anyone who attacked Israelis or their possessions as ‘fighters who are ‘resisting the occupation,’ there is no justification under Palestinian law and practice not to include last week’s arsonists among the Palestinian ‘heroes’ who receive monthly salaries.”
Furthermore, the longer the terrorists remain in jail – in other words, the worse the act of terror, such as murder – the higher the salary.
According to Marcus, if Abbas was sincere in sending firefighting assistance last week, now is the perfect time to demonstrate this change in policy.
But “should Abbas insist on adding the imprisoned arsonists to the PA payroll, his hypocrisy in sending a few fire engines to Israel will be exposed to the world.”
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