Palestinian Authority Pays February Terror Salaries — Abbas Continues ‘Pay-for-Slay’
Error: Contact form not found.
by Itamar Marcus and Ephraim D. Tepler
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appoints Mohammad Mustafa as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in Ramallah, in the West Bank March 14, 2024 in this handout image. Photo: Palestinian president office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
Last week, the Palestinian Authority (PA) announced that it is paying February’s monthly “allowances.”
Two similar announcements appeared, as can be seen in the chart below — with the PA Postal Service laconically announcing the payments in general and the “PA employees’ salaries” Telegram channel noting that these were the monthly payments for “Martyrs, wounded, and prisoners”:
| Palestine Post, Facebook page, March 5, 2025 | “PA employees’ salaries”, Telegram, March 5, 2025 |
| “Palestine Post announces the beginning of payment of the monetary allowances tomorrow morning, Thursday, March 6, 2025, at the main post offices and through the ATMs … The allowance payments in the Jenin and Tulkarem districts will be made through the nearest payment center in the other nearby districts due to the security situation.
#PalestinePost” |
“Palestine Post: The payment of salaries to the families of the Martyrs, wounded, and prisoners begins on Thursday morning [March 6, 2025]. In Jenin and Tulkarem, the payment will be made through the nearest payment center in the adjacent other districts.” |
While the Palestine Post announcement did not mention for whom the payments were in particular, the employees’ channel understood that these payments were for terrorists — the Pay-for-Slay payments that the PA had said it had stopped.
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) is certain that these are terror salaries, because the PA postal service never made payments for the PA prior to April 2021. The postal service started making payments only after PA banks closed 35,000 terrorist bank accounts, following PMW’s warning to the banks that their continued acceptance of the PA terror rewards would constitute a violation of Israeli law, and expose them to civil and criminal liability:
The decision to pay the prisoners’ salaries through the post office branches was … after the banks refused to accept the salary sheets of the prisoners and released prisoners due to the Israeli threats (i.e., PMW’s warning letters) to harm and sue them.
[Ma’an, independent Palestinian news agency, April 5, 2021]
From that first terror payment in April 2021 through August 2024, the PA postal service announcements explicitly said that the payments were for the “Martyrs, prisoners and wounded,” just like the current post in the PA employees’ salaries’ Telegram group.
After August 2024, the announcements became more general, possibly due to international condemnation when PMW exposed these continued payments.
PMW has verified that the postal service made no announcements of any payments of any kind before April 5, 2021, the month the PA moved the terror salaries from the banks to the postal service. In other words, the only payments the postal service makes are terror rewards, which continued this month.
The payments made by the PA postal services are proof that the Pay-for-Slay payments to terrorists continue, despite Mahmoud Abbas’ presidential decree changing certain structures, as anticipated by PMW.
Itamar Marcus is Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)’s Founder and Director. Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch. A version of this article originally appeared at PMW.
