Ramallah to Reward Families of Hamas Terrorists with Nearly $3 Million

Jerusalem, 17 October, 2023 (TPS) -- The Palestinian Authority will pay nearly $3 million to the families of slain Hamas terrorists who slaughtered civilians in Gaza border communities on Oct. 7, Palestinian Media Watch reports. And the Palestinian Authority will find a way to deliver the payments despite the fact that Gaza is at war and that Hamas seeks to overthrow the PA.

“The PA sends every month nearly half of the PA budget to Gaza. They call it ‘southern districts,’” PMW director Itamar Marcus told the Tazpit Press Service.

“We are used to see PA and Gaza as two different entities, but the PA funds all the civil servants in Gaza,” Marcus stressed.

“We know that in the past, when Israel carried out operations in Gaza, and many Hamas terrorists were killed, there was suddenly a many ‘martyrs,’ but they didn’t get the payments right away so there was a lot of complaints from Hamas prisoners,” Marcus said.

“Eventually, they were paid retroactively. According to PA law the families of the “Martyrs” should start receiving money immediately. Given the situation we don’t know when it will be done but as in the past, the money will be paid as the PA gives this highest priority,” he explained to TPS.

More than 1,400 Israelis were killed and over 4,100 others were wounded while at least 199 captives were taken back to Gaza. But more importantly for the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund are the 1,500 Hamas terrorists killed inside Israel, whose families are entitled to the disbursements which Israelis refer to as “pay for slay.”

Under P.A. law, every Palestinian terrorist who is killed attacking Israelis is classified as a “martyr” and the family is rewarded with a 6,000 shekel ($1,511) grant and a monthly stipend of 1,400 shekel ($353) for life.

PMW’s report estimated that each family will receive 7,400 shekels ($1,843) for the first month and 11,100,000 shekels ($2,789,430) in total to the families of the Hamas terrorists killed in the attack that began on Oct. 7.

In addition, there are 50 Hamas terrorists captured by Israel who participated in the massacre who will be paid at least 70,000 shekels ($17,590) in total this month. Terrorists in Israeli prisons receive monthly stipends starting at 1,400 shekels per month. The payouts eventually increase to 12,000 shekels ($2,990) per month.

Terrorist prisoners who are married with children receive even higher payouts.

In total, the P.A. will pay at least 11,170,000 shekels ($2,807,021) in payments to the families of dead Hamas terrorists and to imprisoned Hamas terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre. PMW stressed that this was a conservative estimate, because as the war continues Israeli forces will kill and capture more terrorists.

“The Palestinian Authority should be sending a big thank-you to the E.U. countries and Norway, currently the largest funders of the P.A., because the P.A. could not possibly make these terror payments without them,” Palestinian Media Watch stated.

“These donor countries like to pretend that it’s not their money rewarding terrorists, but everyone knows that the P.A. could not reward terrorists without this generous foreign funding. When payments to teachers, police and street cleaners are taken care of by international donors, the P.A. has the hundreds of millions available it needs to pay for terror,” the NGO said.

Jerusalem regularly offsets an equivalent amount from taxes that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

A comparison of the amount of U.S. aid provided to the Palestinian Authority with the number of people killed in Palestinian terror attacks found that American financial support “fuels terror, not peace,” according to a PMW study released in March.

Ramallah has been paying out the “pay for slay” stipends to imprisoned terrorists and the families of Palestinians killed while carrying out terror attacks for years. But the issue came under scrutiny following the murder of Taylor Force, who was killed when 21-year-old Bashar Masalha went on a stabbing spree in Jaffa in 2016.

Force’s murder became a high profile because he was a US citizen, and because he was killed near the Peres Center for Peace as then-Vice President Joe Biden was meeting with former Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Masalha was killed by responding security personnel, but reports later surfaced that his family in Qalqilya was receiving special payouts from the PA.