The Palestinian Authority (PA) has been accused of paying out $200 million to the families of terrorists in 2025, despite pledging it would stop doing so.
According to the US State Department, the payments were still disbursed even after PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced the end of the so-called "pay-for-slay" programme.
The scheme, officially named the PA Martyrs Fund, has been running since the late 1960s and sees the authority provide financial support for the families of Palestinians convicted of terror offences in Israel.
Most contentiously, the size of the payout increases based on the severity of the offence and the length of sentence, leading to accusations from Israel that the fund actively incentivises terrorist murders.
Abbas announced in February last year that the scheme would come to an end, ostensibly as a step towards a two-state solution, but critics have since claimed that it was simply perpetuated under a different name.
These fears appear to have been confirmed as, according to the Washington Free Beacon, the State Department filed a "nonpublic notice" with the US Congress, detailing the extent of payments in the past year.
Per the report, the department confirmed that the programme effectively continued under the guise of a new welfare system.
It also shared Israeli intelligence assessments that these payments totalled more than $140 million in 2024 and increased to approaching $220 million in 2025.
"The old Palestinian system of compensation for Palestinian terrorists and the families of terrorists killed in the course of committing such acts of terrorism gradually transferred responsibility for compensation to the Palestinian National Foundation for Economic Empowerment (PNEEI) under the guise of social welfare," the filing reportedly read.
"Despite changing the mechanism for doing so, the PA continued the payments to Palestinian terrorists and their families during the reporting period."
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