The U.S. State Department said Wednesday the Palestinian Authority remains ineligible for American foreign assistance, citing continued payments to Palestinian terrorists and their families despite official claims of reform.
The State Department reported that the Palestinian Authority distributed $156 million to Palestinian terrorists and their relatives in 2025, according to Israeli statistical data cited in the official filing to Congress. Of that sum, $126 million went directly to imprisoned and released Palestinian terrorists, while $30 million supported families of individuals who died committing acts of terrorism.
“The P.A. continues to provide a system of compensation in support of terrorism through new mechanisms and under a different name,” the State Department stated.
The Palestinian Authority had announced in February 2025 that it would terminate payments through its Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, claiming a pivot toward a new system ostensibly based on socioeconomic need rather than violent activity. Payments would flow instead through the Palestinian National Foundation for Economic Empowerment, a purportedly independent social welfare entity operating under the PA’s social development ministry.
The State Department determined the restructuring to be deceptive. Evidence demonstrated that the authority simply relocated the terror-payment apparatus without genuinely discontinuing it. “Open-source reports showed the P.A. continued compensating terrorists and their families despite claims to the contrary,” the State Department concluded.
PA Finance Minister Estephan Salameh inadvertently exposed the continuity of the program in February 2026, merely one year after PA President Mahmoud Abbas claimed to have revoked the underlying decrees. Salameh reaffirmed the authority’s commitment to the compensation scheme and admitted that the practice had never ceased.
“With effort and great, almost impossible difficulty, we continue to provide this 60% rate of [P.A. public employee] salaries. We have not abandoned any Palestinian resident, whether they are prisoners or families of martyrs and wounded. This is a clear fundamental issue,” Salameh stated, according to State Department documentation.
The finance minister’s candid acknowledgment came barely three months after his predecessor, Omar Bitar, was dismissed in November 2025 following the PA’s public admission that it had continued compensating terrorists and their families under the previous system. Bitar’s removal appeared designed to manage political optics rather than signal genuine policy reversal.
The State Department documented an additional layer of coordination: Palestinian leadership actively communicates with released terrorists through official announcements and social media to guide them through the process of receiving continued compensation. “The department assesses that Palestinian leadership continues to use official announcements, including through social media, to notify released Palestinian terrorists of the steps they should take to receive continued compensation,” the report stated.
The determination also cited violations of the Taylor Force Act, which requires recipient authorities to publicly condemn acts of violence against American and Israeli citizens. “P.A. officials continue to fail to publicly condemn acts of violence against U.S. and Israeli citizens in violation of the Taylor Force Act,” the State Department concluded.
The Taylor Force Act, enacted following the 2016 killing of a U.S. Army veteran by a Palestinian terrorist while visiting Israel, mandates annual State Department certification that the Palestinian Authority, Palestine Liberation Organization, and affiliated entities meet legal requirements for American assistance. Wednesday’s report represents a formal determination that no such certification is possible.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
