The Times of Israel reports: The Palestine Liberation Organization is still paying wages to convicted terrorists imprisoned in Israel, a Palestinian official confirmed Wednesday, contradicting comments by US Secretary of Defense Rex Tillerson that the provocative policy is being stopped.
Issa Qaraqe, head of the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs, said that the PLO had not stopped paying wages to families of prisoners held in Israel and had no intention of stopping. “There is no end to the payments” of the prisoners and their families, he told the Times of Israel. “We reject ending the subsidies to the prisoners and families of martyrs. We will not apologize for it.”
“The American and Israeli pressure is an aggression against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority,” Qaraqe said, adding that “almost every other household among the Palestinian people is the family of a prisoner or martyr.” There are some 6,500 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails.
Read more here.