This article originally appeared in the Jewish Chronicle.
Theresa May’s government has been urged to seek assurances from Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas that the man who murdered a British student in Jerusalem last week will not now be paid a salary by the PA for his act of terrorism.
In a letter sent to the Prime Minister, Labour Friends of Israel chair Joan Ryan MP also called on the British government to request that the PA publically condemns the murder of Hannah Bladon by Jamil Tamimi on a tram earlier this month.
The UK sends £25 million to the PA in aid every year, and there is longstanding concern that British taxpayers’ money has been used to pay “salaries” to convicted terrorists.
The 57-year-old Palestinian, who has a history of mental health issues, is said to have told cops he killed the 20-year-old in the hope that a soldier in the carriage would kill him.
An Israeli court has ruled he is fit to stand trial over her death and will be treated as a terrorist by the justice system.
According to Itamar Marcus, spokesman for the Israeli monitoring group Palestinian Media Watch, that means Tamimi or his family qualify for a “salary” from the PA.
Following the murder of Ms Bladon, who was a student from Birmingham University on a placement at Hebrew University, Ofir Gendelman, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official spokesman, tweeted: “Not only didn’t PA president Abbas condemn Hannah Bladon’s murder, but he’ll reward the Palestinian attacker who did it with a monthly salary.”
In a strongly worded letter to the Prime Minster, the LFI chair said that if President Abbas failed to fulfil both demands the Department for International Development should “sanction the PA financially”.
Ms Ryan told the JC:”I am a strong supporter of international development spending but British taxpayers will rightly not understand if our aid money goes to a body which pays obscene ‘salaries’ to those who murder British citizens. I have been calling for the UK government to get a grip of this for the last 18 months. The Palestinian Authority needs to be told in no uncertain terms that unless it stops paying salaries to terrorists who murder innocent people – British, Israeli or any other nationality – our aid to them will stop until they get the message.
