07-Oct-16: Haaretz: British foreign aid to the Palestinian Arabs is being delayed while the return on funding is investigated

From today's The Sun revelations [Source]

This might turn out to be a big deal. We're hoping.

As Haaretz reports this afternoon ["U.K. suspends aid to Palestinians over concern it reaches terrorists"]:

British government freezes transfer of 25 million pounds to the PA following complaints that money ends up with assailants who carried out attacks against Israel. | By Barak Ravid | Oct. 7, 2016 | 2:33 PM | The British government has decided to freeze a transfer of 25 million pounds – about a third of the annual aid money it grants the Palestinian Authority – due to concerns that such money had been passed to pay allowances to terrorists or their families.
According to the Sun newspaper [which we tweeted a few hours ago here], the recently appointed international development secretary, Priti Patel, has announced that the transfer of funds will be suspended until the conclusion of an investigation that was opened into the matter. Earlier this year, a number of right-wing parliament members complained to the British Foreign Ministry and International Development Department that British tax payers' money was transferred as aid to the PA's budget, and from there onwards as allowances to assailants who carried out attacks against Israel. Sources in the British Foreign Ministry told the Sun that aid to the Palestinian Authority will not stop, but that part of it will be suspended until the end of an investigation into the matter. According to the sources, chances are that the suspended aid will be delivered in 2017. “We are not stopping for the Palestinian Authority overall, just delaying it to a date when we know our money won’t be going to people who do nothing in return for it.”

In reality, as we have been writing here for years (for instance, "27-Mar-16: The PA's "Rewards for Terror" scheme and the lies that keep the pounds flowing in"; and from five years earlier "1-Mar-11: Finally, some sanity on European funding of Palestinian Arab terror"), it's simply untrue that Palestinian Arabs engaged in, convicted of, and serving time for, terrorism have done "nothing in return for it". They have done terror.

And in doing that, they have produced a meaningful return on the PA's investment in a scheme we have repeatedly called Rewards for Terror. That scheme may be the single most impactful of the Palestinian Authority's various initiatives.

Let's hope the British investigation doesn't get hijacked along the way.