Anyone familiar with the Israeli-Palestinain conflict on both sides recognizes that terrorism against Jews is a key part of the nationalistic resistance of the Palestinian cause, legitimized by the Palestinian leaders on all levels; whether they justify it or not depends on the side each individual takes. For the lone wolf terrorist who is planning out an attack on Israelis, mostly but not only Jews, the idealistic consideration may have some impact on their actions, however, it is minor and insignificant in comparison with the fiscal benefits of committing such unforgivable acts. 

Every significant organization in the Palestinian world, including Hamas, the PLO (Fatah/Palestinian Authority), and the Islamic Jihad, all have some sort of benefits program for both terrorists who are incarcerated in Israeli prisons and their families. The ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, the PLO, which has the largest global funding out of all different Palestinian parties, has set in place a system to ensure that not only are terrorists compensated for their crimes but are incentivized to kill as many Jews as possible in exchange for “bonuses” in their salary while sitting in jail.  In 2018 alone, the PA openly declared that as part of their annual budget, they spent 502 million NIS on all living terrorists, both inside and outside of the Israeli prison system.

When you have a #PayToSlay policy, when you indoctrinate your children in schools to kill Jews, when parents send out children to do their dirty work, you end up having dead children, though fortunately not this time.#NoToChildSoldiershttps://t.co/htOPAIrbHd

— ElBluemountain #JusticeforMalkiRoth 🇮🇱 (@EBluemountain1) January 22, 2023

The Younis brothers for example, who were most recently discharged from Israeli incarceration after serving 40 years for the kidnapping and killing of non-combatant soldiers back in the 80s, were each paid 12,000 NIS monthly while serving their sentences. To put that into context, the average salary for Israeli citizens as of July 2022 before taxes was just below 12,000 NIS ($3500); meanwhile, the median salary in PA-controlled territories is less than 2,700 NIS ($800) a month. In other words, convicted murderers and terrorists were making more money sitting in an Israeli jail cell than an average hardworking father or mother in Israel is today, and comparing them to their own nation, they were considered top-percentile earners in Palestinian society due to the PA’s lack of budgeting for the growth of the free market.

Karim Younis, one of the convicted brothers, said after his release that he regrets nothing and if given the opportunity, would repeat his heinous crimes. Of course, he doesn’t regret anything because, for the past 4 decades, his family has been under the fiscal protection of the Palestinian Authority with little to no worries; to be a father in a patriarchal society and not be pleased with these killings would be even crazier than committing them in the first place.

Will the esteemed European Union foreign ministers raise with the Palestinian PM the demand to stop PA 'Pay to Slay' salaries to Palestinian terrorists or to cease the relentless antisemitic incitement in Palestinian school books?

The EU is a primary funder in both cases here. https://t.co/3rjS2JVTX0

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 23, 2023

It should be noted that the Palestinians do not even hide this. In open defiance of the United States' 'Taylor Force Act' which calls for funds to be stripped from the aid package the Americans give Palestinians if it is used to pay for terror, the data used above in this piece is proudly published by the Palestinian Authority almost annually and is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of all the non-reported funds used for paying families of terrorists or as they call them “Shahidim”.

An example of unofficial grants given to terrorists comes from Hamas when just this past September they promoted terrorism by giving $200 to anyone who would harm Jews and then uploading it to social media. A savvy young teen in Gaza or the West Bank who may have been exposed to this advertisement would not see harming Jews as some sort of mighty idealistic agenda, but simply a means to an end; a few seconds of physical labor and injuring a Jew in exchange for a week’s worth of salary. 

To provide the Palestinian Authority with US assistance so that it can continue “pay for slay” is unexplainable — Americans and Israelis should be outraged by the Biden administration’s plans to do so.

— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) March 23, 2021

Alon Avitar, an Israel Defense Forces Lieutenant Colonel explained to Israeli Channel 12 in April of last year just how the process of allocating terrorist funds works. "What happens is that from the moment you are defined as a prisoner in Israeli prisons or as a family of martyrs, a file is opened for you at the PA offices. There is an exact graph showing who gets how much, based on how many years they will be in prison, if they have a mother and how many children they have, etc.” According to Avitar, after the convicted terrorists are discharged, the Palestinian Authority typically hires them. That means that many Palestinian Authority offices are literally occupied by convicted killers. 

On the global front, Israel is often seen as the one who needs to make the first step towards an agreement with the Palestinians, that being some sort of commitment to giving up lands in Judea and Samaria; meanwhile, the PA has implemented a pay-per- Jewish kill system that seems to be completely overlooked. Perhaps if the international community would like so desperately to see a two-state solution progress, the first step should be pushing hard on the Palestinians to defund terrorism, before asking Israel to give up lands conquered from the Jordanian kingdom over 50 years ago.