RAMALLAH, West Bank — Preliminary results from an external audit have determined that the Palestinian Authority’s reform of its welfare program is being properly implemented to ensure recipients are no longer being awarded based on whether their relative carried out an attack against Israel, two Western diplomats briefed on the audit told The Times of Israel.

The Alvarez and Marsal (A&M) global consulting firm has been carrying out an audit of the PA’s welfare program for much of the past year, as Ramallah seeks to prove that its properly implementing a reform announced by President Mahmoud Abbas in February 2025.

The announcement came after years of US pressure to scrap a program that rewarded the families of prisoners based on the length of one’s sentence, in addition to the families of those wounded or killed while carrying out attacks against Israelis. Critics dubbed the policy “pay-to-slay” and say it incentivized terrorism.

But while US President Donald Trump’s administration initially welcomed Abbas’s decree canceling all legislation enshrining the old welfare policy, it has since raised questions over whether the reform has actually been implemented.

In late April, the State Department publicly informed Congress that the PA has not halted payments to the families of prisoners based on the length of their sentence, despite announcing otherwise.

The State Department report appeared to rely exclusively on information from the Israeli government and NGOs highly antagonistic to the PA, with definitive evidence of the reform’s roll-back not included.

Internal documents from the PA obtained last year by The Times of Israel indicated the reform was in fact implemented and that the welfare program moved to a strictly needs-based system in which recipients were only eligible based on their socioeconomic status, as opposed to their involvement in the conflict against Israel.

Seeking to back up its position on such a controversial issue, the PA commissioned A&M to carry out an external audit, hoping such a review would put to bed questions about the reform’s legitimacy.........

© The Times of Israel