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Palestinian Political Culture Makes It Impossible for Abbas to Stop Paying Terrorists
(New York Post) Jonathan S. Tobin - After telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that the problem of the Palestinian Authority's payment of salaries to imprisoned terrorists and their families had been solved, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson admitted to the House Foreign Affairs Committee a day later that there was only an "active discussion" about the issue. Within hours of Tillerson's initial statement, members of Abbas' government announced that there were no plans to stop payments to terrorists. Indeed, they considered the entire discussion a form of "aggression" against the Palestinian people. Anti-Jewish violence is an essential element of the Palestinian national narrative. Ending support for terror is essential to peace, but it's also an impossible task for Abbas, who is worried about losing support to his Hamas rivals. Palestinian political culture makes it impossible for Abbas to end the payments.