Australia ends direct aid to Palestinian Authority over 'martyr payments'

Australia has ended direct aid to the Palestinian Authority because it says its donations could increase the self-governing body's capacity to pay Palestinians convicted of politically motivated violence.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said on Monday that funding to a World Bank's trust fund was cut after she wrote to the Palestinian Authority in late May seeking assurance that Australian funding was not being misspent.

She said in a statement she's concerned that providing further funds allows the authority to use its own budget to spend on activities that "Australia would never support."

Australia's 10 million Australian dollar ($7.4 million) donation to the trust fund would now be re-routed to the United Nations' Humanitarian Fund for the Palestinian Territories, which provides vulnerable Palestinians with health care, food, water, improved sanitation and shelter.

The PA makes a variety of social payments to the relatives of Palestinians detained by Israel or killed in violence, whether they were carrying out attacks or shot dead by Israeli military forces.

A dedicated fund was set up in the 1960s and estimates suggest it distributes as much as $100 million a year.

Around 35,000 families receive support from the fund. 

The Trump administration has long backed a bill that would suspend financial aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) until it ends social payments to the families of Palestinians detained or killed in the conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government has long called for an end to the payments.

Head of the PLO delegation to the US, Husam Zomlot, said last year that the payments support families "who lost their breadwinners to the atrocities of the occupation, the vast majority of whom are unduly arrested or killed by Israel."

In May, the UN council held a special meeting to discuss violence in Gaza, following an Israeli massacre of over 60 Palestinian protesters.

The US and Australia were the only two countries to vote against a proposal for an "independent, international commission of inquiry" to investigate violations of human rights in Gaza.