Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Jan. 14, 2018. Photo: Flash90.

JNS.org – There are two ways of finding employment with the Palestinian Authority (PA). The first requires you to file an application and take the necessary exams. Assuming that the PA hires you, though, the pay is not too good.

The other way to find employment with the PA is to carry out a terror attack against Israelis. Ideally, you should kill at least one Israeli, get arrested, stand trial in Israel, and be sentenced to prison. The moment you are sentenced, the PA will issue your employee card. Your salary is dependent on the length of your prison sentence — with longer sentences commanding higher pay.

All this goes on right under our noses. Under the 2018 budget, authorized by the government in Ramallah just two months ago, 1.2 billion shekels ($340 million) will go to terrorists convicted by Israeli courts and their families.

The Knesset has decided to put an end to that, at least concerning the tax revenues that Israel transfers to the PA.

Yesh Atid party member MK Elazar Stern and I have joined other lawmakers in initiating legislation that will require the Israeli government — in particular, the finance and defense ministers — to deduct the funds that Ramallah pays imprisoned terrorists and their relatives from tax revenues that the PA gets from Israel.

We must not allow Israel to become a link in the chain of these payments to terrorists.

Messages are being sent from entities in Israel to entities in various countries who wish to cut off funds to the PA, warning them that the PA will collapse if the aid comes to an end.

But we must not resuscitate the PA with funds that are spent attacking us. When the PA signs off on salaries to terrorists, it dips the quill of its pen in the blood of our dead, who were murdered at the hands of those very same terrorists.

Avi Dichter is a Knesset member for the Likud party. He was previously head of the Shin Bet security agency, public security minister, and homefront defense minister.