Over recent years, the issue of allowances paid to Palestinian prisoners has shifted from an internal social welfare policy aimed at supporting a segment of society directly affected by Israel’s detention system, into one of the most influential tools in the political and media conflict surrounding Palestine. Rather than being approached within its natural context as a consequence of a prolonged occupation, these allowances have been re-framed in Israeli and American discourse through the narrative of “terrorism financing.” In doing so, a social policy has been transformed into a political pressure instrument designed to undermine the Palestinian narrative as a whole.

This trajectory was reinforced by a report published by the Washington Free Beacon in January 2026, which cited an undisclosed notification from the US State Department to Congress. The report claimed that, during 2025, the Palestinian Authority (PA) continued to disburse hundreds of millions of dollars to the families of prisoners and those killed, despite previous commitments to halt or restructure these payments. The significance of the report lay less in the figures themselves than in the way they were embedded within an accusatory narrative that reproduced prevailing discourse at a moment of heightened regional political sensitivity.

According to the report, the PA did not abolish the allowances programme but instead reorganised it administratively by transferring oversight to an institution with a developmental and economic character. Officially, this move was presented as part of a reform process intended to separate social assistance from political contention. However, the step was met with widespread scepticism in Washington and Tel Aviv, where it was viewed as a cosmetic change that did not alter the substance of the policy. From the US perspective, changing the institutional framework is insufficient as long as........

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