US shelved sanctions on PA leaders after Abbas fired minister over prisoner payments |
The US threatened last month to personally sanction Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other senior Palestinian officials over illicit payments to Palestinian security prisoners, but ultimately held off on the move after Abbas fired the minister who had signed off on the stipends, a US official, a Palestinian official and three other sources familiar with the matter have told The Times of Israel.
US President Donald Trump’s administration planned to designate Abbas, his deputy Hussein al-Sheikh, PA Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa, then-PA finance minister Omar Bitar and senior PLO official Ahmad Majdalani as Specially Designated Global Terrorists after getting wind of the payments to the families of prisoners made through an old mechanism that awarded them based on the length of their sentence, the sources said.
The terror financing sanctions would have significantly curtailed the PA’s ability to continue operating, as foreign governments would risk exposing themselves to secondary sanctions from the US if they provided further assistance to Ramallah, which the cash-strapped authority desperately needs.
But days after its sanctions threat was passed along to Ramallah in early November, Washington decided to hold off on the far-reaching move, with Ramallah understanding that Abbas’s ousting of Bitar had been enough to convince the Trump administration that the PA was serious about ensuring illicit payments........