The PA’s prisoner and “martyr” payments are a welfare policy with serious security and diplomatic consequences. The system has covered prisoners held by Israel and families of people killed or wounded, including people involved in attacks. Its critics focus on eligibility rules that connect benefits to imprisonment or the circumstances of death; the PA has described the payments as social support. Oslo II agreement text.
How eligibility has been structured
Historically, PA laws and regulations assigned payments through separate channels, including the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs. Critics have pointed to benefit schedules based on time in prison, which can correlate with sentence length and offense severity. That structure gives the policy a direct connection to convicted offenders, even though it does not prove what motivated any individual attack.
Israeli and US officials have objected that public funds should not reward or incentivize violence. The US Taylor Force Act, enacted in 2018, restricted certain US assistance to the PA until the administration certified that payments to individuals imprisoned for terrorism and their families had ended. This page does not assign a budget share or claim a proven causal effect on attack decisions.
Why the policy remains disputed
The dispute concerns both the recipients and the payment rules: supporters frame the program as aid to families and people affected by detention; opponents argue that tying benefits to imprisonment creates an incentive structure that honors violence. A sound account distinguishes the documented policy from claims about an attacker’s private motives. The wider PA fiscal crisis is discussed in the governance page.