President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has signed a decree to halt the government’s system of financially rewarding individuals who have carried out terror attacks against Israelis, Palestinian officials confirmed on Monday. 

The so-called “pay to slay program,” in which the PA provides financial support to the families of imprisoned terrorists based on the length of their sentence, is criticized for incentivizing individuals to carry out deadly attacks against civilians. 

With Monday’s reform, however, the PA claims that it will do away with its long-standing practice of funneling cash to prisoners and their families for terrorizing the Jewish state. Families that require welfare assistance, the decree states, will be eligible for stipends based on financial need. 

The goal of the change, according to PA state media outlet, WAFA, is “to strengthen Palestinian resilience, similar to social welfare systems adopted by other countries with strong and institutionalized social protection mechanisms.”

The decree is viewed as a win for Mr. Trump and an effort by the PA to improve its relationship with America. Palestinian officials told the Times of Israel that Ramallah has “earned lessons from the way it dealt with Trump during his first term.” 

However, the news of the reform was met with skepticism by the international community. Hillel Fuld, whose family sued the PA and the Palestine Liberation Organization for providing financial support to the teenage Palestinian terrorist who murdered his American-Israeli brother, Ari Fuld, is not holding his breath. “We have to remember who we’re dealing with here,” Mr. Fuld tells the Sun. “Rewarding the murder of Jews is such a fundamental ideology of theirs — I just don’t believe that it would go away.” 

Senior advisor for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Richard Goldberg, warned that the public should wait for further detail on the proposed reform before drawing any conclusions. “In the past there has been a proposal to basically keep the system but claim the terrorists are just poor people who qualify based on income level. Let’s see,” he reckoned. 

A leading authority on urban warfare, John Spencer, called the reform “huge” if true, but notes that he is “very skeptical” that the PA would dismantle the policy due to its expansive nature. “‘Pay to slay’ includes payments to the prisoners/terrorists/convicted and their families, free tuition and health care after prison, a job in the Palestinian Authority after prison, and the martyrs fund,” he wrote on X. 

The news comes as a Middle East watchdog group, Palestinian Media Watch, reports that hundreds of convicted Palestinian terrorists set to be released from prison in Israel as part of the ceasefire and hostage exchange deal have reportedly received up to six figures through monthly salaries paid to them by the PA. 

In total, the Palestinian authority has forked over 506,000,000 shekels, or US$141,837,000, to the 734 individuals set to be released from Israeli prisons, Palestinian Media Watch claims. That’s just a small fraction of the US$350,000,000 that the PA directs to its so-called “Martyrs’ Fund” on an annual basis.