Teri Schure
March 27, 2025
When I was in Israel in September of 2023—one month before the slaughter of innocent civilians by Hamas and random Gazans—our tour guide educated us about a payment system set up by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in which large sums of money are paid out to Palestinians as a reward for killing Jews.
It wasn't until October 7, and the subsequent misinformation or oftentimes no information disseminated by the mainstream media regarding Israel, Jews, and Zionism, that I began to research the history of "Pay to Slay." The PA has a payout system they call the "Martyrs Fund," although most critics call it "Pay to Slay."
These martyr payments are very popular among Palestinians—support for the payments among Palestinians is as high as 91%. The compensation for violence and terror against Jews has been described as part of the ethos of Palestinian society and is considered sacred in Palestinian politics.
The "pay to slay" reward system for terrorizing and murdering Jews is funneled and paid through two funding operations:
1. The Foundation for the Care of the Families of Martyrs pays monthly cash payments to the families of Palestinians killed, injured, or imprisoned while carrying out violence against Israelis.
2. The Prisoners Fund makes disbursements to Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails.
In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) established the Martyrs Fund to compensate the families of dead and wounded Palestinian militants.
In 1970, the Palestine Martyrs Works Society, the economic institution of the PLO, handled some of the martyr payments directly and also gave employment to Palestinians living in refugee housing in Lebanon during the 1970s.
In 1971, the compensation system was replaced by the Society for the Care of Palestinian Martyrs and Prisoners. The Society defined "military martyrs" as Palestinian freedom fighters, which could encompass any and all Palestinians. The families of "freedom fighters" were not only compensated for the death of their family members as a result of terrorist operations against Jews, but also included the death of any freedom fighter who died of natural causes while on active service.
Non-members of the PLO killed during any kind of encounter with Israeli security forces were awarded a one-time payment, creating an incentive for families to apply to have their dead relatives reclassified as fighters.
The payments incentivized the First Intifada, the Arabic word for "uprising," from 1987 to 1993, and the Second Intifada, also called the Al-Aqsa Intifada, from 2000 to 2005.
The First Intifada ended with the signing of the first Oslo Accords, which provided a framework for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. No single event signaled the end of the Second Intifada. Most analysts agree that it had run its course by late 2005. The two uprisings resulted in the death of more than 5,000 Palestinians and approximately 1,400 Israelis.
As protection against both Intifadas, Israel built a separation barrier in Gaza in 1996 and a similar barrier in the West Bank in 2002.
During this time, Palestinian militants from all political factions received compensation, and a series of funding agencies have existed over the decades, including "Fund for Families of Martyrs and the Injured."
Although the violence had subsided by the end of 2005, the PA lost support amid charges of widespread corruption. Many Palestinians now turned to Hamas, which won the 2006 legislative elections and took power by force in Gaza in 2007, resulting in the de facto division of the Palestinian territories into two entities. The PA was in charge of governing the West Bank, and Hamas governed the Gaza Strip, with "pay to slay" payments continuing as usual. Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip without an election since 2007.
In 2007, the World Bank, an **international financial institution** that provides loans and grants to the governments of low—and middle-income countries for economic development, stated that the funding "did not seem justified from a welfare or fiscal perspective."
By 2014, mounting criticism of the payments led to the PA transferring management of the Martyrs Fund to the Palestinian Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which employed over 500 bureaucrats responsible for disbursing the government funding to recipients and their families.
In 2016, the PA paid out approximately 1.1 billion Israeli shekels (the equivalent of $303 million in U.S. dollars) to Palestinians as a reward for killing and maiming Jews. It is important to note that these payments were significantly higher than the average Palestinian wage.
As of 2016, the fund had an annual budget of $173 million and supported approximately 35,100 families. The PA made payments to families of both prisoners and Palestinian civilians killed in contexts ranging from political demonstrations that turned violent, where protesters were killed by non-lethal riot control methods (such as being hit by a tear gas canister).
In 2017, $160 million was awarded to 13,000 beneficiaries of "prisoner payments" ($12,307 per person), and $183 million was paid to 33,700 families in "martyr payments" ($5,430 per family) annually. In 2017, the National Association of the Martyrs' Families of Palestine also awarded cost-of-living increases.
These numbers equate to more than 81,000 terrorists paid off by the PA to conduct terror, murder, and mayhem against Jews from 2016 to 2017.
In June 2017, PA President Mahmoud Abbas called efforts to stop the martyr payments an "aggression against the Palestinian people." He defended the salaries paid to imprisoned Palestinians as a "social responsibility.
So let me get this straight: the PA, which pays Palestinian citizens to maim, murder, and terrorize Jews, calls efforts to stop those "pay to slay" payments "aggression against the Palestinian people?"
In 2018, President Trump signed the Taylor Force Act in response to the murder of an American, Taylor Force, by a Palestinian. The law cut approximately one-third of U.S. foreign aid payments to the PA until the PA stopped making payments to terrorists and their surviving families. The Trump administration cut over $200 million in bilateral Palestinian aid and reduced UNRWA funding by $300 million.
In response to the 2018 Taylor Force Act and the cuts by the Trump administration, Abbas pledged, "If we are left with one penny, we will spend it on the families of the prisoners and martyrs."
After Joe Biden was elected U.S. President in 2020, Palestinian officials reportedly expressed a willingness to alter the way the PA paid the martyr fund payments. The modified policy is based on prisoners' financial needs rather than the length of their sentence. This change would essentially comply with the 2018 Taylor Force Act.
As a result, the Biden administration resumed payments to the PA, thus allowing the PA to easily redirect U.S. aid payments to the "pay to slay" program. A lawsuit against Joe Biden and Antony Blinken was filed, stating that the United States government funding of "pay to slay" terrorism was a violation of the Taylor Force Act.
In April 2021, Biden resumed sending U.S. aid to the Palestinian territories, and in March 2022, Congress approved $219 million in aid for the Palestinians. In July 2022, the Biden administration announced an additional $200 million to UNRWA.
USAID announced it had spent $150 million in the Palestinian territories, and in 2022 pledged to spend $500 million between 2021 and 2024.
On October 18, 2023, Biden announced $100 million in humanitarian aid due to the Israel-Hamas war and Israel's ongoing siege, which has cut off access to food, water, and electricity in Gaza.
According to a White House statement, "This funding will help support over a million displaced and conflict-affected people with clean water, food, hygiene support, medical care, and other essential needs."
Based on the fact that in 2024, the average Palestinian unemployment rate was 51% (35% in the West Bank and 80% in the Gaza Strip), the "pay to slay" payout system is nothing more than an enticing incentive to commit continued violence against the Jewish people.
On February 10, 2025, PA President Mahmoud Abbas signed a decree to end the Martyrs Fund, although the PA continues to find creative ways to incentivize terrorism through financial payments.
Despite attempts by Israel and other countries to both deter terrorism and incentivize the PA to end its "pay to slay" policy, the funding continues to this day.
The PA spends nearly $350 million per year on "pay to slay" but just $220 million for its other welfare programs for the rest of its citizens.
**According to Wikipedia:**
Payments to Palestinian prisoners are enshrined in Palestinian law. Under the Amended Palestinian Prisoners Law No. 19 (2004), prisoners who have served a year or more in an Israeli prison are entitled, upon release, to health insurance and tuition-free school, university, and professional education. If they become civil servants, the law stipulates that the Palestinian Authority (PA) will pay their social security and pension fees for the years spent in prison. Incarcerated individuals are entitled to monthly stipends linked to the cost-of-living index. Amendments in 2013 entitle individuals released from jail to a preference for getting jobs with the PA and stipulate that the PA will make up the difference if the civil service salary is lower than the salary they received in prison.
Females who have served 2 years in prison and males who have served 5 years are entitled to receive stipends for the rest of their lives. The fund also pays $106 a month in "canteen money" to all imprisoned Palestinians, including those imprisoned for non-political crimes such as car theft and drug dealing, for prisoners to spend in the prison canteen.
Hamas has operated a separate fund for years, predating its takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007. In 2001, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, boasted that Hamas payments to the families of prisoners and suicide bombers totaled between $2 and $3 million. According to a 2001 report by the Israeli government, the families of prisoners received an initial lump sum payment of between $500 and $5,000, with monthly stipends of about $100, with higher payments for the families of Hamas members.
Critics, including Jewish communities, journalists, foreign politicians, and Israel, often call the payments "pay for slay" and blame the payments for encouraging and incentivizing terrorism, including car ramming and stabbings.
**According to _The Jerusalem Post_**, "The perverse incentive used by the PA is that the more gruesome and worse the attack, the more money the imprisoned 'martyr' and his family receive through the Palestinian Authority's Martyrs Fund. "
In 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case, Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization and United States v. Palestine Liberation Organization, to decide whether American victims of Palestinian terror attacks can sue the PLO and PA for damages based on support for such attacks through the program. United Kingdom
Countering the Palestinian Authority's claims that this is a welfare fund, the World Bank has stated that "the program is clearly not targeted to the poorest households. While some assistance should be directed to this population, the resources devoted to the Fund for Martyrs and the Injured do not seem justified from a welfare or fiscal perspective."
**According to globalaffairs.org:** After the latest Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, 2023, and Israel began a siege on the Gaza Strip, President Joe Biden announced $100 million (USD) in "humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank." Biden also sent Congress a request on October 20 for $14.3 billion in aid for Israel. While the U.S. and Israel have what has historically been called a "special relationship," the U.S. has given funds directly to the Palestinian territories as well. The U.S. is often among the top donors to a United Nations agency that runs Palestinian refugee camps.
The U.S. gives aid to the Palestinian territories in two ways:
Direct funds to the Palestinian territories (also called bilateral aid). Funds can come directly from Congress or government agencies like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) or the Economic Support Fund (ESF), which provides economic development funding abroad, as well as contributions to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which operates 58 refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank.
**According to PolitiFact:** In total, the U.S. has given the Palestinian territories over $11 billion since 1950, including the $6 billion given to the UNRWA.
According to various Israeli and Palestinian sources, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip receive humanitarian cash assistance. While Gaza is plagued by poverty, Hamas has no shortage of cash. Experts say that Hamas has an investment portfolio of real estate and other assets worth $500 million and an annual military budget of as much as $350 million. Hamas has funded an armed force of thousands equipped with rockets and drones and built a vast web of tunnels under Gaza.
**According to the United Nations,** the unemployment rate in Gaza is 47%, and more than 80% of its population lives in poverty.
Since coming to power in the Gaza Strip 17 years ago, Hamas has filled its coffers with hundreds of millions in international aid, overt and covert injections of cash from Iran and other ideological partners, as well as cryptocurrency, taxes, extortion, and smuggling, according to current and former U.S. officials and regional experts.
Much of the money is public and legal, including large sums of financial aid from Qatar via the United Nations, an arrangement encouraged and approved by Israel. The Qatari assistance covers the salaries of civil servants, buys fuel for the power grid, and provides cash to needy families.
According to experts, in addition to levying taxes on Gaza's businesses and residents, Hamas imposes unofficial fees on smuggled goods and other activities for a combined income of up to $450 million per year. Despite international restrictions, Hamas also has real estate and other investments around the globe and uses cryptocurrency to mask some of its transactions. A small portion of its budget seems to come from smuggling in South America, including drug smuggling. The size of the Hamas budget and its sources have increased over time.
Experts and Western governments have questioned whether Hamas mixes the money for its military operations with the funds meant for civilian use. Hamas representatives have said previously that the group strictly separates funding for the administration of Gaza from funding for its military wing, also known as the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
In the wake of October 7, 2023, Hamas's attack on Israel that killed 1,400 people, some former Treasury Department officials and experts argue that the United States and its European allies need to crack down on the group's global financial network.
"There will need to be a policy review," said Jonathan Schanzer, a former Treasury official now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.
**According to the State Department:** Iran has been a consistent financial and military patron of Hamas since the 1990s, long before the group achieved control of Gaza. The funding has gradually increased and is now at about $100 million annually. Hamas leaders have publicly acknowledged Iran's ongoing financial and military support.
In an interview that appeared on Russia Today TV, senior Hamas official Ali Baraka said, "First and foremost, it is Iran that is giving us money and weapons." Last year, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told Al Jazeera that Iran paid $70 million to the group to support its defense plan.
**According to former U.S. counterterrorism officials:** In addition to Iran's support, Hamas has long relied on funds from other ideological allies, including private donations and groups in Turkey, Kuwait, and Malaysia.
**According to treasury reports:** Hamas also has donors in other parts of the world, including the U.S. From 1995 until 2001, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development operated as the chief U.S. fundraising arm of Hamas, sending more than $12 million "with the intent to willfully contribute funds, goods, and services to Hamas," according to federal court documents and government assessments.
After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas gained another major benefactor, the Qatari government. As conditions continued to deteriorate for residents of the enclave, Israel, the U.S., and the international community turned to gas-rich Qatar to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. Qatari officials began carrying millions of dollars in cash in suitcases through Israel's Erez border crossing into Gaza with the permission of the Israeli government.
For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been in power for much of the time after Hamas began ruling Gaza, the policy was meant to bring some degree of stability to Gaza and bolster Israel's security. It also, however, helped fuel the bitter rivalry between Hamas and the PA, which continued to govern the occupied West Bank.
Under the arrangement, Qatar provided $1.49 billion in financial aid between 2012 and 2021 to support projects for Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a Qatari official told NBC News.
The deal also triggered criticism in Israel and discomfort in Washington. But former U.S. officials, who were in government at the time, said there were no easy options given that Hamas, which had crushed its political rivals, was firmly in charge.
"I think there was broad recognition that the situation in Gaza was pretty awful," former CIA Director John Brennan said. "There needed to be some flow of funds from somewhere \[and\] Qatar had the financial wherewithal to do that."
Neomi Neumann, former head of research for Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, said, "We didn't find any other way to finance this, and we didn't want a humanitarian crisis." But from the start, she said, "We knew it was so problematic." "All the funds that were supposed to go to the public, most of it went to their military capability," Neumann said.
In 2021, Israel and Qatar agreed to a new arrangement that ended the use of hand-delivered cash in suitcases. Instead, the Qatari money was distributed through the U.N. at supermarkets, money exchange shops, post offices, and other locations.
The Qatari official told NBC News that Qatar does not provide financial aid to Hamas. "We provide aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza," the official said. "Qatari aid is fully coordinated with the Israeli authorities, the U.S. government, and the United Nations. All goods such as food, medicine, and fuel pass directly through Israel before entering Gaza."
Qatar says the money has been used for its intended purposes. The Israeli government has "complete oversight over the funds and would have canceled the agreements if aid was not reaching its intended recipients," the Qatari official said.
But skeptics say the U.N. was unable to exercise strict control over how the money was allocated and that it enabled Hamas to use tax revenue and other funds to build up its military arm.
After its takeover of Gaza, Hamas also "developed the capability to tax and extort," said Matthew Levitt, a senior Treasury official who focused on countering terrorist financial networks. Hamas began to rake in taxes and kickbacks from salaries, sales of goods, and smuggling, a sum that now reaches up to $300 million to $450 million a year, said Levitt, now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank.
Although the U.S. and the European Union have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, "they're not effectively cut off from the international financial system," said Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Counter Extremism Project. "They actually are able to invest funds in companies and in real estate."
According to a Treasury announcement, Hamas' leadership has invested its income in an international investment portfolio worth $500 million in real estate and other assets from companies in Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, which it uses to conceal and launder its money.
Cryptocurrencies have helped the group invest its money while bypassing international financial sanctions, according to a report by the Counter Extremism Project. To combat those efforts. "Hamas was an early adopter of fundraising in crypto starting in 2019," said Ari Redbord, a former federal prosecutor and global head of policy and government affairs at TRM Labs, which is working to track Hamas funding. "They were using Telegram channels to solicit donations. They then set up website infrastructure to solicit donations." Yet, experts, including Redbord, emphasize that cryptocurrency remains a small piece of the group's financial strategy.
Many experts have said that Hamas supplements its income with various criminal enterprises to some extent. Because of international pressure on their finances, all large-scale terror groups, such as Hamas, have to ensure that they have multiple, overlapping financing streams.
For example, Hamas has a presence in the tri-border area of South America, a region along Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina known as a haven for terrorists and transnational criminal organizations. While experts say the activity there likely makes up a small portion of Hamas' broader financial apparatus, it participates in drug, arms, and people trafficking, smuggling, and money laundering operations based there in connection with Hezbollah's efforts.
Former U.S. officials said that during the past two decades, Western governments tended to focus more on cutting off the finances of other Islamist organizations, while Hamas received a lower priority. Gerald Feierstein, who worked in the State Department's counterterrorism bureau from 2006 to 2008, said Hamas was not perceived as a direct threat to the U.S. "From a counterterrorism perspective, people weren't really focused on Hamas," said Feierstein, now at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington. "At that point, the focus was really AQ," he said, referring to al Qaeda.
In the past few years, however, Western governments have disrupted some sources of Hamas financing. In August 2020, U.S. authorities seized millions of dollars and more than 300 cryptocurrency assets linked to groups, including Hamas, as part of a series of terrorism-related actions.
An Israeli official said that Hamas failed to use the opportunity offered by international aid and other financial assistance to improve the lives of Palestinians in Gaza. "If only Hamas would have prioritized the Gazan population over its military and extremist ideology, Gaza would have been able to benefit from economic growth and prosperity," the official said. "In retrospect, it was a mistake to allow a terrorist organization to control the Gaza Strip. We intend to rectify that mistake now."