Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement: Cutting Allowances for Families of Prisoners, Martyrs is Submission to American and Zionist Pressure

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement denounced on Monday the Ramallah-based authority’s decision to stop paying allowances to the families of prisoners, martyrs, and the wounded. The movement considered this step unacceptable nationally and a submission to American and Zionist pressures, and an abandonment of issues bearing an authentic national and struggle-related dimension.

The movement said in a statement received by the Yemeni News Agency (Saba) that the entitlements of prisoners, martyrs, and the wounded are a legal and national right stemming from their struggle and national status. It indicated that restricting the disbursement of these allowances solely to a “social need” criterion ignores the political and legal dimensions guaranteed by successive Palestinian systems for this struggling segment.

The movement’s statement stressed that “this unacceptable step represents a punitive measure affecting important segments of our people who offered the most precious they have on the path of liberation and return. It is a great betrayal of them and a denial of their inherent rights in light of the open Zionist war and the stifling siege our people live under, and the severe suffering endured by our courageous prisoners.”

The statement called on the authority’s apparatuses to immediately retract all measures affecting the rights of prisoners, martyrs, and the wounded, and to revert to working by the previous systems that regulated the rights of those struggling segments. It affirmed that “replacing them with a social inquiry system is a nationally unacceptable step that excludes thousands of families who sacrificed for the homeland.”

It emphasized the need for a national consensus and professional standards based on Palestinian national interests that are not subject to the dictates of the Israeli enemy and international conditions, nor to harming the essence of the Palestinian cause and the rights of broad segments of the Palestinian people.