Report:
U.S. Stops Palestinian Aid Payments
by IPT News
• Jun 25, 2018 at 3:01 pm
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The United States has halted aid to the
Palestinian Authority (PA) until further review, i24News reports, two months after Congress passed the Taylor
Force Act.
The act mandates that the U.S. freeze
assistance to the Palestinian territories "that directly benefits the
PA," unless the Palestinian government adheres to several
stipulations, including the termination of financial transfers to
terrorists and denouncing and investigating Palestinian terrorist attacks.
President Trump signed the Taylor
Force Act into law in March. It was named for Taylor Force,
an American citizen murdered in March 2016 in Jaffa
by a Palestinian terrorist. Shortly after the attack, the Palestinian
Authority and Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party glorified the terrorist who killed Force.
"Our understanding is that US
funding to the West Bank and Gaza is on hold pending an administration
review," a Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide told i24NEWS.
The USAID office overseeing the
Palestinian territories reportedly lacks a formal budget for the next
fiscal year. The freeze has also led to the suspension of some development
programs overseen by international aid agencies. A HALO trust official, for
example, told i24NEWS that the U.S. suspended transferring
money at the end of May.
Withholding financing for third-party
projects, in addition to USAID, suggests that the administration is
adopting a broader view of the Taylor Force Act and what constitutes
assistance that "directly benefits" the PA.
According to a Palestinian official, the
Trump administration informed the PA in mid-January that it would
re-evaluate its Palestinian assistance budget. That official also claims
that the United States told the PA that aid was being suspended, pending
review, following an Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting in May.
Under the PA, Palestinian terrorists and
their families receive payments that are far higher than welfare recipients.
Payments to current and former
Palestinian prisoners fall under the budget's "fighting sector"
category and terrorists' families receive a "monthly salary,"
while poor families receive quarterly "monetary aid."
A terrorist's socioeconomic status is not
factored into the salaries. Payments to released prisoners and jailed
Palestinians are based on the length of a prison sentence, which reflects
the severity of their actionsy. The more brutal the attack or murder,
the more money a Palestinian prisoner gets.
The Trump administration pressured Abbas on several occasions last year to
stop the terrorist payments. A top PA aide at the time called the idea "insane," while Abbas
referred to this practice as a "social responsibility."
Economic
Crisis Triggers Massive Iranian Protests
by John Rossomando • Jun 25, 2018
at 5:32 pm
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Chants of "Death to Palestine," "Help us, not
Gaza," "Our enemy is right here, they lie and say its
America" and "Leave Syria alone and deal with Iran"
reverberated through Iran's capital Monday. Tehran merchants protested the
collapse of their country's currency, the rial, which has lost half its
value this year.
Other demonstrations broke out in other Iranian cities.
The chants show discontent with the government's indifference toward
Iran's economy and its insistence on spending billions of dollars on
foreign wars and on terrorism. Iran received more than $100 billion in
sanctions relief under the Obama administration's nuclear deal, but
ordinary Iranians have not seen the benefits.
Iran announced plans this week to set
the official currency exchange rate at 42,000 rials to the dollar. A dollar
bought 70 rials after Iran's 1979 revolution. Sanctions announced last
month by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo could further worsen the situation.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) dominates Iran's economy.
It also forms the backbone of Iran's terror support around the world, from
Hizballah and the Shiite militias in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The IRGC's investment in terrorism is directly connected to the
plummeting rial, exiled Iranian journalist Babak Taghvaee told the
Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Protesters spontaneously filled Tehran's Grand Bazaar Monday, marched on the parliament and clashed with IRGC riot police.
The magnitude of the protests rivals those of 1978 that brought the
current regime to power.
While the protests caught the regime off guard, they are not expected to
lead to its overthrow, Taghvaee said. Unlike the shah's regime, which
acquiesced to foreign pressure in the face of demonstrations, the Islamic
Republic will fight to keep its power.
"This regime is not acting softly like [the] shah. As they always
say: 'We have not come to the power that easily, to leave quickly,'"
Taghvaee said.
But if it did fall, the repercussions would extend far beyond Iran's
borders, Commentary magazine writer Sohrab Ahmari wrote.
"Hamas and [Hizballah] and Palestinian Jihad can kiss their Iranian
funding goodbye if the regime falls," Ahmari said.
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