Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday ordered the family of a Palestinian terrorist who murdered two Israelis be paid $42,000 and gifted new houses after their home was demolished by the Israeli military.
PA District Governor of Ramallah Laila Ghannam met with the family of Muhannad Halabi and gave them the money in Jordanian Dinars, the Kan public broadcaster reported. Ghannam also told the family Abbas had given the order to find them new housing.
Halabi stabbed two Israelis, Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Banita, to death and injured the latter’s wife and their toddler in an October 3, 2015 attack in Jerusalem’s Old City. Halabi was shot and killed by Israeli police.
As Breitbart has reported in the past, Ghannam has on several occasions comforted the families of “martyred” Palestinian terrorists. She has also publicly declared it a duty to support terrorists’ families.
According to the Times of Israel, Sunday’s payments are the first high-profile payments to terrorist families since the Biden administration took office, and run counter to claims made by senior Palestinian officials that the so-called pay-for-slay policy would be revisited as part of an effort to rebuild severed ties with Washington.
The PA paid as much as NIS 600 million ($181 million) in 2020 in salaries to Palestinian terrorists and their families.
The Trump administration cut aid to the Palestinians over its boycott of the U.S. as well as its pay–for–slay scheme.
The Biden administration has resumed aid to the Palestinians in a bid to restore what it called “credible engagement” with the Palestinians and work towards resurrecting the long-dead two-state solution.