RAMALLAH: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has issued a decree overturning a system of payments to the families of Palestinians imprisoned or killed by Israeli forces that has been a longstanding source of friction with the United States.
The current system has been dubbed “pay for slay” by critics who say it rewards the families of militants who carry out attacks on Israel, although that label is rejected by Palestinians.
Payments will be transferred to a government body affiliated with the president’s office, according to the text of the decree, with a new disbursement mechanism, details of which have so far not been announced.
Scrapping the system has been a major demand of successive US administrations on the Palestinian Authority, the body set up three decades ago under the Oslo interim peace accords which exercises limited governance in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The decision comes as the Palestinian Authority faces mounting financial pressure from a slowdown in aid, a squeeze on a system of tax revenue transfers by Israel and a slump in contributions from Palestinians who have been shut out of the Israeli labor market by the war in Gaza.
Israel has been deducting the payments made by the authority from taxes collected on its behalf from goods that cross its territory to Palestinian areas.
The Palestinian Authority has appealed for more aid from Arab and European states to make up for the shortfall of billions of shekels but has so far struggled to make headway.
Palestinian president scraps prisoner payment system criticized by US
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Palestinian president scraps prisoner payment system criticized by US
- Move was a response to a long-standing request from Washington
US condemns Houthi detention of embassy staff in Yemen. Guterres seeks release of all detained UN staff
- US State Department says the sham proceedings only prove that the Houthis rely on the use of terror against their own people to stay in power
- UN Secretary General says the continued Houthi detention and prosecution of UN personnel is a violation of international law
WASHINGTON/UNITED NATIONS: The US on Wednesday condemned the ongoing detention of current and former local staffers of the US embassy in Yemen by the Houthi movement.
“The United States condemns the Houthis’ ongoing unlawful detention of current and former local staff of the US Mission to Yemen,” US State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement.
“The Houthis’ arrests of those staff, and the sham proceedings that have been brought against them, are further evidence that the Houthis rely on the use of terror against their own people as a way to stay in power,” Pigott said.
Earlier, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Houthi rebels not to prosecute detained UN personnel and to work “in good faith” to immediately release all detained staff from the UN and foreign agencies and missions.
Guterres condemned the referrals of the UN personnel to the Houthis’ special criminal court and called the detentions of UN staff a violation of international law, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
There are currently 59 UN personnel, all Yemeni nationals, detained by the Iranian-backed Houthis, in addition to dozens from nongovernmental organizations, civil society and diplomatic missions, he said.
He said a number of them have been referred to the criminal court in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. “There were procedures going on in the court, I believe, today and all of this is very, very worrying to us,” Dujarric said.
The court in late November convicted 17 people of spying for foreign governments, part of a yearslong Houthi crackdown on Yemeni staffers working for foreign organizations.
The court said the 17 people were part of “espionage cells within a spy network affiliated with the American, Israeli and Saudi intelligence,” according to the Houthi-run SABA news agency. They were sentenced to death by firing squad in public, but a lawyer for some of them said the sentence can be appealed.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk said in a statement Tuesday that one of those referred to the court was from his office. He said the colleague, who has been detained since November 2021, was presented to the “so-called” court “on fabricated charges of espionage connected to his work.”
“This is totally unacceptable and a grave human rights violence,” Türk said.
He said detainees have been held in “intolerable conditions” and his office has received “very concerning reports of mistreatment of numerous staff.” Dujarric said some have been held incommunicado for years.
Dujarric said the UN is in constant contact with the Houthis, and the secretary-general and others have also raised the issue of the detainees with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Oman and others.
The Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014 and since then they have been engaged in a civil war with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which is supported by a Saudi-led military coalition.
The November verdict was the latest in the Houthi crackdown in areas of Yemen under their control. They have imprisoned thousands of people during the civil war.
