The Palestinian Authority’s proposed interim constitution, a draft of which was released last week, includes support for incarcerated and deceased Palestinian terrorists and their families, a practice called “pay for slay” by its critics, which the PA claimed to have ended last year.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas published the interim constitution on Feb. 10, allowing for public comments over the next 60 days. The move comes as the Trump administration and the European Union have demanded reforms from the PA in recent months, including an end to the so-called “martyrs’ payments” to convicted and killed terrorists and their families.

Article 24 of the interim constitution states that “the State of Palestine and the relevant national institutions work to provide protection and care for the families of martyrs, and the wounded, and prisoners, and those released from the occupation prisons, and the victims of genocide.” 

Article 44 states that “the law organizes the provision of comprehensive care for the families of martyrs, the wounded, and prisoners, and those released, in preservation of their national dignity and their humanitarian and living needs.” 

“Martyrs” refers broadly to any Palestinian killed by Israelis, but historically the payments have gone to the families of those killed or imprisoned attempting to commit or committing acts of terror. The longer the sentence, the greater the payments, thus creating an incentive to kill more Israelis.

Israel, the U.S., EU and others have said the policy incentivizes terrorism. The Taylor Force Act, which was signed into law in 2018, bars the U.S. from sending most aid to the PA until the policy ends; an Israeli law passed the same year docks the equivalent of the funds paid annually from taxes and tariffs Israel collects on the PA’s behalf.

Palestinian law characterizes the payments as ensuring a “dignified life” for “partici[pants] in the struggle against the occupation.” The minimum payments are greater than government assistance provided to low-income families and above average for employees of the PA.

The PA has repeatedly made commitments to its Western benefactors to stop the payments to terrorists and their families, amounting to over $1 billion in recent years, but ultimately changed the funding process rather than ending it. 

Abbas dismissed the Palestinian finance minister in November for continuing the payments, though Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Abbas at the time of being complicit and trying to “fool the world.” 

Maurice Hirsch, the former director of IDF military prosecution in the West Bank and the head of the PA Accountability and Reform Initiative at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told Jewish Insider that “the fact that the draft constitution of the PA includes its commitment to ‘pay for slay’ was not in any way surprising.”

“This is something which has become a fundamental element of all PA governments,” he added. “It’s a commitment that the PA in all its different levels starting from Abbas all the way down has simply entrenched in all of Palestinian society. I don’t believe that there actually is a Palestinian leader who will have the ability to say, ‘We will no longer pay any rewards to the terrorists.'”

The payments, Hirsch said, are “in the draft constitution [as] part of the Palestinian ethos in the same way as you see their commitment to expunging the Jewish presence in Israel and same way you see the commitment to the return of every single one of the refugees, as it were, to Israel to destroy Israel demographically.”

The PA draft constitution begins with a preamble that accuses Israel — without mentioning the Jewish state by name — of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

It states that “Palestine is the cradle of heavenly religions,” mentioning only Islam and Christianity, not Judaism. “Jerusalem,” the constitution states, “is the capital of the State of Palestine,” which is “committed to preserving [Jerusalem’s] religious character and protecting its Islamic and Christian sanctities.” Islam is the official religion of the PA, while “Christianity has its status in Palestine, and its followers’ rights are respected,” but there is no mention of Judaism.

The document also states that “the permanent headquarters of the House of Representatives is in the city of Jerusalem, the capital of the State of Palestine,” though the Palestinian Parliament is currently located in Ramallah. 

The Palestinian interim constitution not only seeks to extend its laws into Israel in its articles about Jerusalem, but also in “ensuring the right of return.” In Palestinian parlance, “the right of return” generally means returning to any place in which an Arab lived in Israel before 1948, though Abbas has, in the past, expressed a willingness to compromise.  “The dream of return remains alive in the hearts of Palestinians everywhere, generation after generation,” the constitution states.