Palestinian terrorists in Jordan and Lebanon reportedly celebrated on Monday after the latest pay-for-slay payments reached their accounts, according to Palestinian Media Watch, despite earlier promises by the Palestinian Authority to end the policy.
Last year, PA President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree canceling the pay-for-slay program. However, funds have continued to be distributed through what the PA describes as a needs-based welfare framework administered by the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution.
Despite the announced policy change, PMW alleged that the payments are continuing in locations believed to be beyond Western monitoring, including Lebanon and Jordan.
The report comes weeks after Fatah Revolutionary Council Deputy Secretary Fayez Abu Aita said on official PA television that Abbas had promised that there is a plan to “maintain all our duties and commitments towards our sons, the sons of the Martyrs, towards our sons, the sons of the Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinian prisoners in the occupation’s prisons,” according to a translation shared by PMW.
Speaking with The Jerusalem Post, Itamar Marcus, an Israeli researcher and the founder of PMW, explained that while the international community is scrutinizing whether the PA is paying prisoners’ salaries, it is not closely monitoring the “families of martyrs.”
'Families of martyrs'
As of 2017, the last year for which the PA’s budget was made public, 13,500 “families of martyrs” and released prisoners living outside Palestinian territory were receiving stipends, according to documentation PMW shared with the Post. Marcus said the families and prisoners receive a minimum monthly payment of NIS 1,400. Based on PMW’s estimates, he said the PA is distributing more than NIS 18 million per month through the program.
These alleged payments have continued despite an apparent economic crisis in the West Bank. Since Hamas’s October 7 attacks, approximately one-fifth of the West Bank’s economy has disappeared, according to the PA, largely due to frozen work permits. GDP data published by the PA indicated that the economy has shrunk by nearly a quarter.
Among those reportedly receiving payments is Ahlam Tamimi, a Palestinian terrorist who participated in the 2001 bombing of the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem. Tamimi, who pleaded guilty to her role in the attack, transported a Hamas suicide bomber to the crowded pizzeria, killing 15 people, including seven children and several American nationals, and injuring 130.
Tamimi was released from prison in 2011 to Jordan as part of a hostage exchange deal with Hamas. The United States’ Rewards for Justice program is currently offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to her capture, and she remains on the FBI’s most wanted list. According to PMW, Tamimi received NIS 6,000 this week and has received around NIS 1,158,000 in pay-for-slay payments since she was first incarcerated.
Addressing Western support for the PA assuming a greater role in the Gaza Strip, Marcus said the PA “has never distanced itself from terror in their internal language.” He added that, as a supporter of terrorism, the PA cannot be considered a “relevant peace partner.”
'A symptom of the Palestinian Authority's support for terror'
“The Palestinian Authority paying salaries to terrorists isn’t the problem. It’s a symptom. It’s a symptom of the Palestinian Authority’s support for terror,” he concluded. Arnold Roth, the father of American-Australian teenager Malka Chana Roth, who was killed in the Sbarro bombing, told the Post about his continued efforts to have Tamimi extradited to the United States.
“The reality is that Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, has been paying her for almost 25 years,” Roth said. “Why would they do this? Well, that part’s easy to answer, because she has become an icon of the kind of murderous lust that they’re looking to encourage.
“She’s a poster child for this. [Tamimi] was a young woman with very little experience in life, all of 21 years old when she murdered my daughter and 15 other individuals. And this is what the Palestinian Authority’s reward scheme is calculated to encourage. I can’t think of a more serious criticism that you could make about any political group anywhere in the world than that.”
“These people [the PA] are insane, but not as insane as the people who hand money over to them,” he continued.
“It makes me deeply pessimistic whenever I see people speaking and acting as if Mahmoud Abbas and his terrorist organization, the Palestinian Authority, are to be respected as just another political entity. The Palestinian Authority is a terrorist organization in every sense of the word.
“Tamimi is the proof of the idea that the Palestinian Authority should not be trusted on any subject and certainly should never receive money from countries that provide that money from taxpayer funds,” he concluded.