The Israeli parliament (Knesset) on Wednesday passed a law to strip the citizenship from claimants of the Palestinian Authority's (PA) "pay-for-slay" terror stipends.
Ramallah has a longstanding — and widely condemned — policy of compensating terrorists and their families. It extends to Palestinians jailed by Israel for acts of or links to terrorism, as well as those wounded or killed while committing violent terror attacks. Even those Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship were eligible for the compensation, until now.
Israel has sought to clamp down on the policy by deducting money from tax revenues it collects on behalf of the West Bank's PA. Under a 2018 law, Israel calculates each year how much it believes the PA paid in stipends to terrorists and deducts that amount from the tax revenues.
"Our answer to terrorism is to hit it hard," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on Twitter following the parliamentary vote, tagging the bill's author Ofir Katz, a lawmaker from Netanyahu's Likud party.
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