Twenty Years after a Notorious Terrorist Attack, the Perpetrators Are Still Cashing In

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem—one of the second intifada’s most brutal acts of terror, which left fifteen dead and 130 wounded. While the attack—like the scores of other such bombings in those years—did nothing to improve the lot of the Palestinians, or to aid in the creation of a Palestinian state, it proved quite lucrative for the attackers. Maurice Hirsch explains:

By now, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has paid Abdullah Barghouti, the terrorist who built the bomb and is responsible for the murder of 67 people in various attacks, a cumulative sum of $285,571. Every month, the PA pays him a salary of $2,255. In addition, the PA has paid the family of the suicide bomber $68,498. Every month the PA continues to pay his family an allowance of $432. The minimum wage in the PA is $44 a month.

The monthly PA salary payments to the imprisoned terrorists are not just a whim. Rather, they are codified in the PA Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners, No. 19 of 2004 and regulations promulgated pursuant to the law.

As for Ahlam Tamimi, who planned the bombing, she lives in Jordan where she hosts a television program. In March, Interpol revoked the warrant for her arrest. She remains unrepentant:

[In 2011], Tamimi was interviewed on Israeli Channel 1. . . . After explaining that she was the one who chose the target of the attack, Tamimi was asked if she knew how many children had been killed in the attack. When she heard that eight children had been murdered, Tamimi broke into a huge smile.

In a subsequent interview, she told a Jordanian journalist:

I don’t regret what happened, absolutely not. That is the path; I give myself for the sake of Allah, to jihad for Allah. I carried out [my mission] and Allah made me successful. You know the number of victims who were killed. All that was thanks to the success from Allah.

Read more at Palestinian Media Watch

More about: Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terror, Second Intifada

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023