The Palestinian Authority says it has completed the establishment of a new welfare program and finished phasing out a previous system that critics claimed incentivized terror attacks against Israelis, according to an update Ramallah shared with interlocutors that was obtained by The Times of Israel.
The document prepared by the body behind the program, the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution (PNEEI), states that new criteria for adjudicating welfare stipends have been adopted and that over 3,000 individuals were accordingly notified that they no longer qualify for government assistance. At the same time, more than 2,000 households were informed that they will now be able to receive allowances for the first time under the new arrangement.
With Israel continuing to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars of the PA’s tax revenue funds, Ramallah has been unable to issue the first round of welfare payments. However, the update shared with European officials earlier this month states that stipends for the month of June will be allocated based on the updated eligibility standards.
The PA is running several months behind in its salaries for public employees as well as its welfare payments due to the Israeli freeze on monthly clearance revenue transfers. Last week, Ramallah began to send salary payments to public employees for the month of June. Welfare payments, which are now distributed by the extra-governmental PNEEI, have not yet been issued.
A Palestinian source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel that several hundred families of prisoners — a small portion of the total number of prisoners’ families — have been informed that they would continue receiving stipends, as they qualify based on their economic status. However, they will receive payments moving forward through the PNEEI, rather than the PA’s Prisoners and Martyrs Funds.
While the PNEEI has existed for several years, a new board of trustees along with professional staff has been appointed, the document obtained by The Times of Israel states.
The update indicates that the PA has been making good on the decree signed by President Mahmoud Abbas in February, which canceled legislation that enshrined in law elements of its old welfare system that paid security prisoners based on the length of their sentence along with the families of slain attackers, in a program critics dubbed “pay to slay.”
Palestinian leaders long sought to defend the payments, describing them as a form of social welfare and necessary compensation for victims of a callous Israeli military justice system in the West Bank.
But the scheme exposed Ramallah to persistent criticism from the West and Israel, with the latter arguing that it demonstrated the PA was not a true partner for peace.
After years of pressure, Abbas began taking steps during the Biden administration to establish a new system allocating welfare stipends strictly based on economic need. He held off on announcing the move until after US President Donald Trump returned to office, hoping the reform would buy him some much-needed goodwill with the new administration.
Reforming the welfare policy is designed to bring the PA into compliance with the 2018 congressional legislation known as the Taylor Force Act, which suspended US aid to the PA as long as it continued granting prisoners stipends based on time served.
The US would still be barred from directly funding the PA due to legislation preventing such aid once Ramallah began advancing investigations against Israel in the International Criminal Court. However, if the reform is deemed sufficient by Washington, the US would be able to fund projects that directly benefit the PA.
Earlier this year, the PA invited the US to send a delegation to Ramallah in order to certify that the new system is in place. But that invitation has gone unanswered, as the Trump administration has been largely uninterested in unfoldings in the West Bank, leading Ramallah to pay out of pocket to hire an international auditing firm to certify that the old system has been shelved and that the new one is up and running, a Western diplomat told The Times of Israel, adding that the review will likely take two to three months to complete.
In the meantime, US and Israeli officials have continued to refer to the PA’s old payment system as still in place, appearing to disregard the announced changes.
“The Palestinian Authority has its own set of problems – pay for slay – they pay people to kill Israelis,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier this month.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on whether Rubio’s comments were based on new or outdated information regarding the PA’s welfare system.