The Palestinian Authority announced on Monday it would end its system of payments to the families of those killed by Israel or held in Israeli prisons, including for attacks on Israelis, responding to a long-standing request from Washington.
“President Mahmoud Abbas… issued a decree to cancel articles in the laws and regulations related to the system of paying financial allocations to the families of prisoners, martyrs and the wounded,” the official WAFA news agency reported.
These families are to remain eligible for financial benefits under the Palestinian social welfare system, according to criteria that apply to everyone, the report said.
The details of the implementation of the decree, which is likely to affect thousands of people, remains unclear.
WAFA said the programmes supporting prisoners’ families would be transferred to an independent foundation, the Palestinian National Economic Development Institute.
Palestinian armed groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas have criticised Abbas’s decision.
“This behaviour flies in the face of patriotism,” Hamas said in a statement, calling for the decree to be rescinded.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is dominated by the Fatah movement which rivals Hamas, and is based in the occupied West Bank.
Israel has long denounced the payments, and the Netanyahu government has cited the practice as a reason to freeze funds for the PA.
The PA’s benefit system has also been criticised by Israel’s main ally the United States.
In 2018, during his first term as US president, Donald Trump signed into law rules suspending financial assistance to the PA as long as it continued to pay benefits to Palestinians linked to “terrorist” entities, according to the criteria of the Israeli authorities.
The Palestinian Authority has previously said the funds were a way of supporting families who have lost income, and may suffer the seizure or demolition of their property by Israel.
To circumvent this international pressure, the PA has already amended the system several times, seeking ways to maintain it.
