'Revitalized' Palestinian Authority Boasts of Rewarding Attacks on Israel With Biden Funds 

Days after the Biden administration gave its blessing to a newly formed Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank, the PA handed out dozens of bonus payments for security forces who were involved in attacks on Israelis.

According to the PA's official news outlets, the Palestinian General Intelligence Service on April 4 provided a grant to 36 families of agency officials who died or were imprisoned as a result of their involvement in anti-Israel security crimes. The reports did not identify the recipients of the grant or its amount, but the purpose was clear.

"Service Director in Jenin Adnan Abu Aisheh said that the message of the service, under the instructions of its leader, Majed Faraj, is to emphasize what President Mahmoud Abbas has said again and again—that if we are left with one penny, it will be paid to the families of the martyrs and the prisoners," reported the PA's WAFA news agency and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida daily.

The grant is the latest blow to President Joe Biden's nascent peace plan, which involves empowering a "revitalized" PA to govern a future Palestinian state that can coexist alongside Israel. Officials in the Biden administration have demanded that the PA be reformed and then given administrative control over Gaza following Israel's war against Hamas, the rival Palestinian faction that rules the territory.

But since Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack, which sparked the Gaza war, the PA has avoided condemning the atrocities of that day and has doubled down on its longstanding policy of paying generous salaries to terrorists and their families. The PA has committed to expanding the "pay for slay" annual budget by tens of millions of dollars to cover Palestinians who were killed or captured while carrying out Oct. 7 atrocities and the resulting war.

At least two ministers in the new U.S.-approved PA government have advocated terrorism against Jews, and a Palestinian official who oversees "pay for slay" has explicitly rejected Biden officials' claims that the authority is poised to significantly reform the program.

"The United States is undermining its own goals by funding the PA," Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli watchdog group that flagged the grant, told the Washington Free Beacon. "And when you look at the security services, you see the perfect example."

Marcus noted that U.S. funding of the PA security services—reinstated by Biden after being nixed by former president Donald Trump—helped pay not only for the grant but also for arming and training the intelligence agents who carried out the attacks for which their families were rewarded. In the past few years, PA security forces were behind dozens of attacks on Israelis, mostly soldiers but also a number civilians.

"Now, the United States is saying, ‘Send Palestinian security services into Gaza,’" Marcus said. "That's not going to lead to peace, it's going to lead to right back to the situation on Oct. 6."

"The only way the Palestinian Authority will ever stop its support for terrorism is if it faces real repercussions," he added. "The United States and other Western countries should cut off all funding and all training of Palestinian Authority until the entire system is cleaned up."

The PA’s General Intelligence Service and president’s and prime minister’s offices did not response to requests for comment.

A State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon in a statement: "From the outset of the Biden Administration, we have consistently made clear that we are strongly opposed to this practice [of ‘pay for slay’]."

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