The US State Department informed Congress this month that the Palestinian Authority has not ceased payments to the families of security prisoners and slain attackers, despite a reform Ramallah implemented to end cash transfers awarded in accordance with the amount of time one served behind Israeli bars.

“The PA continues to provide a system of compensation in support of terrorism through new mechanisms and under a different name,” the State Department said in a report submitted to Congress earlier this month.

US President Donald Trump’s administration made the unusual decision to publicize the report on Wednesday, which relied on open-source information from the Israeli government and several organizations that have long been critical of the PA.

Under a 2018 US law, the secretary of state is required to report to Congress every 180 days if the PA is ending payments to the families of prisoners and slain attackers, which are based on the length of one’s sentence. Critics have dubbed the policy “pay-for-slay,” saying it incentivizes terrorism against Israelis.

While Ramallah long sought to defend the payments as a form of social welfare and necessary compensation for victims of what it says is a callous Israeli military justice system in the West Bank, PA President Mahmoud Abbas signed a decree last year scrapping the legislation conditioning payments on one’s prison sentence.

Abbas also revived an agency called the Palestinian National Foundation for Economic Empowerment (PNEEI) and tasked it with responsibility over a new welfare system that offered stipends strictly based on economic need.

“Despite changing the mechanisms, the PA continued payments and benefits to Palestinian terrorists and their families,” the State Department wrote in its report to Congress.

Accordingly, the Trump administration concluded the PA is not in compliance with a 2018 US law known as the Taylor Force Act, which barred American economic aid to Ramallah as long as the controversial payments continued.

To prove its assessment, the State Department cited figures publicized by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, according to which the PA provided $156 million in payments to the families of security prisoners and slain attackers.

The State Department appeared to be referring to a November 2025 tweet from Sa’ar, though that post said the PA “committed” to paying $214 in 2025, as opposed to money actually spent.

The Foreign Ministry has not revealed how Sa’ar arrived at the figure, but Jerusalem has been quick to dismiss the PA’s prisoner payment reform as a guise aimed at fooling the international community.

Israel has maintained this stance as it continues to withhold several billion dollars in funds that belong to the PA, which have brought Ramallah to the brink of collapse

Jerusalem, under the Oslo Accords, is supposed to carry out monthly transfers of clearance revenues collected on Ramallah’s behalf. For several years, it unilaterally withheld the portion of those funds that it said Ramallah was allocating for terrorists and their families. But for the past year, Israel has refused to send any of the clearance revenues. As those funds make up the majority of the PA’s budget, the........

© The Times of Israel