The Ramallah Administrative Court ruled on May 4 against a Palestinian Authority decision to stop paying prisoner Ahmed Firas Hassan his “pay-for-slay” stipend in mid-2025.
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a Jerusalem-based monitoring group, said the episode indirectly reveals the P.A.’s “con game” to hide “pay-for-slay” from Western countries.
The Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund provides monthly stipends to those imprisoned in Israel for attacks on Israelis, and to the families of slain terrorists.
Ahmed Firas Hassan’s salary was stopped together along with those of another 1,600 prisoners three months after P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas issued a “presidential” decree transferring the handling of prisoner stipends to a new entity, the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution (PNEEI).
PMW said it is not clear why this group of terrorists stopped receiving their monthly stipends.
The P.A. created PNEEI after coming under pressure from Western countries to end “pay-for-slay.” The P.A. claimed PNEEI ended the program because Palestinian prisoners would not receive money for their violent acts, but based solely on their socioeconomic status. PMW has previously shown this to be a transparent attempt to pull the wool over Western eyes. “Pay-for-slay” continues as usual.
The Ramallah court case further cements this basic truth, it said.
The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), a group established by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, which “regularly collaborates” with U.S.-designated terrorist groups, according to NGO Monitor, brought the case on behalf of Hassan in August 2025, “with the aim of ending the salary crisis of approximately 1,600 prisoners whose salaries were stopped,” according to a May 5 Al-Araby Al-Jadeed report.
PMW said it exposes the P.A.'s “con game” because the P.A.’s lawyers “didn’t even try to argue that the prisoner wasn’t entitled to a salary but instead claimed some technical rationale behind the suspension,” as revealed by ICHR’s attorney Ahmed Nasra to Hebron’s Radio Alam on May 4.
“The defense of the administrative prosecution was mainly procedural and formal, meaning they did not argue whether the prisoner is entitled or not entitled to a salary. ... Rather, they argued that there was a defect in the lawsuit, that there was a defect in the procedures, formal matters of this kind,” Nasra said.
“The ruling sets a legal precedent for the immediate resumption of salaries for 1,600 jailed terrorists [whose terror stipends had been suspended],” Palestinian Media Watch said.
“You are talking about 1,600 cases of people who already meet the conditions,” Nasra told Radio Alam. “They [the P.A.'s lawyers] had no reservation and did not appeal on the matter of meeting the eligibility conditions.”
From the start, PMW has exposed as fraudulent the P.A.'s attempt to present itself as having reformed its payment-for-terror program. In February, the NGO issued a report showing the P.A. had been engaged in a years-long deception, pretending to halt “pay-for-slay” by various means in order to hoodwink international donors.
In April, the U.S. State Department issued a report to Congress showing that in calendar year 2025, the P.A. provided $156 million in payments and benefits to Palestinian terrorists and their families.
