Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas admitted that tax funds being withheld by Israel would be used to fund Palestinian terrorists during a speech at the Eighth General Conference of Fatah.
The comments confirm that the PA has not ended its pay-for-slay policy, even though it has restructured payments so they no longer reflect the prisoner’s sentence and now distributes the funds under the guise of social welfare.
“The continued holding of Palestinian Authority funds by Israel is an unprecedented event that violates the agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, as well as international law,” Abbas claimed in his Fatah conference address. “...The continued withholding of the Palestinian people’s funds, which have so far exceeded $5 billion…and all this needs to be paid to public employees, to prisoners (terrorists)…”
Israel began withholding funds that the PA had used to pay the salaries of terrorists in 2022, following similar legislation adopted by Washington in 2018. The Taylor Force Act has meant Washington is unable to offer economic aid to Ramallah until it ends pay-for-slay payments and its statements of public support for terrorism.
Palestinian Media Watch founder and director Itamar Marcus commented to The Jerusalem Post that Abbas’s “admission” must have "significant international implications.”
“To justify continued funding of the PA, Western countries have been denying PMW findings that pay-for-slay continues, and have accepted Abbas' lies that it stopped funding terrorists in September 2025,” he explained. “Abbas’s frank admission on camera that he needs money to pay prisoners confirms PMW's documentation."
"Israel will be wise if it uses this video to put pressure on the Western countries to stop funding PA terror, and to withhold their recognition of a Palestinian state, which France and others conditioned on the PA's promise to end pay for slay.”
US: Over $150 million paid to terrorists last year
A total of $156 million was paid out to the terrorists and their families last year, according to a US State Department report published last month. $126m. was paid to Palestinian terrorists, including those released from Israeli custody, and $30m. was paid to the families of Palestinian terrorists who died committing their acts of terrorism. The PA had promised to give the families a total of $214m.
The economic ramifications of the missing funds have caused significant issues in the PA’s public sector, forcing employees to make do with only a fraction of their wages and public institutions, like schools, to operate on a part-time basis.