[Craving even more FPM content? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more. Click here to sign up.]
The Palestinian Authority’s “Pay-For-Slay” program provides generous monthly subsidies to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of terrorists who died while committing their attacks. In this way, the PA both rewards past terrorism and incentivizes future terrorism. This program has angered the American government, which in 2018 passed the Taylor Force Act— named after Taylor Force, an American serviceman who, while walking in Tel Aviv, was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist. The Act requires that the American government halt payments it provides to the PA as long as it continues with its “Pay-For-Slay” program. Biden, disgracefully, was able to obtain waivers to the Act’s enforcement. And more recently, Mahmoud Abbas has tried to disguise his Pay-For-Slay program by describing the payments as “welfare benefits” for the poor, which fooled no one. And just as it did previously, the Palestinian Authority (PA) announced in early April that it would be paying February’s monthly “allowances” to Palestinian prisoners, terrorists, and their families. More on this announcement can be found here: “Palestinian Authority continues Pay-for-Slay, notwithstanding Abbas’ proclamation,” by Ephraim D. Tepler, Palestinian Media Watch, April 9, 2025:
Just as it did last month, the Palestinian Authority announced yesterday that it is paying February’s monthly “allowances” today. One announcement was made laconically by the Postal Service while the “PA employees’ salaries” Telegram channel mentioned in two separate statements that these payments were particularly for “Martyrs, prisoners, and the wounded,” as can be seen in the chart below:
Palestine Post, Facebook page, April 8, 2025 PA Employees’ Salaries, Telegram, April 8, 2025 PA Employees’ Salaries, Telegram, April 8, 2025 “Palestine Post announces the start of the payment of monetary allowances tomorrow morning, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, at the main post offices and through the ATMs. Payment will start at 11:00 AM. We also wish to draw attention to the fact that the allowance payments in the Jenin district will be made through the nearest payment center in the other nearby districts due to the security situation and the [Israeli] raids in these areas.
#Palestine_Post”
“Urgent | Palestine Post announces the start of the distribution of the salaries of the families of the Martyrs, prisoners, and the wounded for the month of February 2025, tomorrow morning, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, at the main post offices and via ATMs. Note that the distribution will begin at 11:00 AM.
We would also like to note that the distribution in the Jenin district will be made through the nearest payment center in other nearby districts, due to the security conditions and the raids observed in those areas.”
“Urgent | Palestine Post | The distribution of the salaries of the families of the Martyrs, prisoners, and wounded in the West Bank for February, 2025 will begin on Wednesday morning, April 9, 2025, at the main offices and through ATMs at 11:00 AM.” While the Palestine Post announcement again did not specify to whom the payments were going, the employees’ channel said explicitly (twice) that they were meant for terrorists. Palestinian Media Watch has no doubt that these are terror salaries since the PA postal service only began facilitating them after the PA banks closed 35,000 terrorist bank accounts. The reason the bank accounts were closed was because PMW warned the banks that if they would continue facilitating those accounts, they would be violating Israeli law and therefore subject to civil and criminal liability.
It is noteworthy that the payments being made today are for February 2025—a month’s delay. PMW has reported that the PA had skipped the payment of a full month’s salary to its employees in 2023 and has not made it up. This is due to the PA being mired in financial crisis because of its high expenditures on payments to terrorists and the resulting losses in international support….
By sleight-of-word, Abbas had hoped to fool the Americans into believing that the money being given to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists were not part of “Pay-For-Slay,” but instead, simply increased payments for the most impoverished. No one in Washington believed it, but under Biden, the American payments to the PA continued despite the Taylor Force Act, for which the administration managed to get a waiver from Congress. Trump is made of sterner stuff. He has already cut hundreds of millions of dollars in direct aid to the PA, as well as payments to UNRWA. Mahmoud Abbas has kept up his defiant tone, the one set in his remark that even if he were “left with one penny, it [the generous monthly stipends] will be paid to the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners.”
Now the aid-slashing Trump administration, that is determined to enforce the Taylor Force Act, is going to provide Mahmoud Abbas with the opportunity to prove he meant it.
