The report confirms the State Department’s determination last week that the PA has not ended its ‘pay-to-slay’ program as promised
The Palestinian Authority will dole out $315 million in payments this year to 23,500 terrorists and their families, earmarking more than $19 million a month for a terrorism incentive program, known as “pay-to-slay,” that PA president Mahmoud Abbas declared dead last year, according to a new analysis by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) research institution shared exclusively with the Washington Free Beacon.
The PA has concealed these payments from Western governments by channeling them through alternate budgets controlled by the PA Security Forces (PASF), its civil services sector, and its pension office, PMW determined. More than 10,000 former inmates are receiving monthly stipends of around $1,280 to $3,800 each month, while the PA will provide another $87,000,000 throughout the year to 13,500 “martyrs and injured” in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
The findings come just a week after the State Department formally determined that the PA shifted to a new terror payment system it hoped to hide from Western donors, the Free Beacon reported, and present the clearest evidence to date that Abbas is violating his February 2025 decree that he had ended the pay-to-slay program. International donors had asked the PA to stop paying terrorists and their families as part of a “reform” project, but Abbas’s government “is not voluntarily disclosing that 10,000 terror reward recipients are hidden in the civil service, the PASF, and as 50-year-old PA pensioners,” according to the PMW report.
Some 6,000 of those pay-to-slay recipients are within the PA’s pensioners program, obscuring the payments at a time when Abbas’s government is maneuvering for a role in postwar Gaza, and that number only stands to increase over time. “As thousands of imprisoned terrorists will be released from prison in the coming years, they will be shuttled into government jobs and early pensions, and the hidden Pay-for-Slay will continue to grow, hidden from international donors,” PMW stated.
By transferring terror-related payments to various government agencies, the PA has been able to declare pay-to-slay void and continue receiving millions from the international community, which largely froze its funding due to the pay-to-slay program. But most donor countries continue to award cash directly to the PA’s civil service programs, including the security forces and pension offices. Even the U.S. government, which froze most of its aid in 2018, still provides funding to the PA’s security forces.
PMW used newly unearthed Telegram chat logs to determine that the PA has rerouted terrorism payments through its pension program.
“The wounded and prisoners—6,000 of them [had their files] transferred to pensions in different offices, and they are now registered there, and they are calling them one by one, asking them for bank account numbers to confirm them as pensioners,” one recipient wrote.
The Telegram chats also confirm the State Department’s finding that the PA has used a new welfare authority called the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution (PNEEI)—purportedly meant to provide money based on need—to pay terrorists and their families.
“I called the Commission of Prisoners and Released Prisoners about this… they told me that the situation regarding released prisoners has returned to how it was before,” according to one person in a September 2025 conversation, seven months after Abbas claimed pay-to-slay had ended. “That is, what is called the PNEEI—is canceled. That’s what they told me. I contacted them a little while ago.”
Beyond the Palestinian territories, the PA maintains “another category of hidden payments” to around 13,500 terrorist families living in diaspora communities across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. More than $86 million was allocated for these families in 2025 alone, and in January of this year all of them “received their terror reward payments as usual via [Palestine Liberation Organization] offices in their countries,” PMW determined based on firsthand accounts.
The PA is able to avoid international scrutiny on these payments by channeling them through the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is not subject to the same strict oversight as the PA.
A State Department official told the Free Beacon that the continuation of pay-to-slay means the PA will not have a role in postwar Gaza reconstruction and governance.
“Attempts by the Palestinian Authority to conceal payments to relatives of those who have murdered both Americans and Israelis are unacceptable,” the official said. “A truly reformed PA that wants to have any part of Gaza must stop these payments immediately. And we will use all available means to verify that they have.”
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