The day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's claim that the Palestinian Authority had ended its policy of paying terrorists was met with incredulity in Israel, Tillerson offered a more modest version of events, telling the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday that the matter was under "active discussion" with the Palestinians. "Their intent is to cease the payments to the family members of those who have committed murder or violence against others".
On Tuesday, Tillerson told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Palestinian leadership "intended" to end its practice that has roiled GOP members of Congress in recent months.
U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have been trying to revive the talks, which reached an impasse in 2014.
Under questioning at a Senate hearing, Tillerson said Washington had pressed Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas on the issue of payments to the families of suicide bombers and attackers killed.
"There have been talks about making the payments in a different way, but not ending them", said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Mr Tillerson offered tepid support for the sanctions measure, but urged Congress to make sure the sanctions legislation does not tie the president's hands and shut down promising avenues of communication between the two former Cold War foes.
Castro asked Tillerson to account for a series of occasions when his foreign policy statements were at odds with the President's, including a recent incident where President Trump seemed to praise Gulf nations for their isolation of Qatar, just hours after Tillerson said the blockade was hampering U.S. military efforts against ISIS.
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Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman delivering a statement to the press, January 10, 2017.
Issa Karake, Palestinian minister of prisoner affairs, called the payments "a national, social and humanitarian duty".
"We follow this closely", Lieberman told Israel's public radio on Wednesday.
"We were pleased to see last month that some payments were stopped to Hamas-affiliated prisoners, and we will continue to have this dialogue with the Palestinians", a State Department official told Fox News.
The Palestine Liberation Organization, the group that formally represents all Palestinians, set up the "martyrs' fund" in 1967.
About 6,500 Palestinians are now being jailed in Israeli prisons.
At the start Tillerson told lawmakers that North Korea had released Otto Warmbier, a USA university student held captive for 17 months, and the United States was seeking the release of three other detained Americans.
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