From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Architect of US law against PA ‘pay-to-slay’ skeptical about Ramallah effort to end it
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
WASHINGTON — The main architect behind Congressional legislation that suspended US aid to the Palestinian Authority over its payments to Palestinian security prisoners and the families of slain attackers says he is “cautiously optimistic” about Ramallah’s Monday decision to reform the payment system that critics argued incentivized terrorism.
Sander Gerber notes that the decree signed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas is a “step in the right direction,” as it moves the families of prisoners and slain attackers into the same welfare system as the rest of Palestinian society, which receives stipends strictly based on economic need.
However, he tells The Times of Israel that the decree makes no mention of ending the PA’s Prisoners Club and Martyrs Fund, which support the families of those in Israeli jails and of those killed or injured carrying out attacks.
“They’re actively glorifying the prisoners and martyrs and encouraging the children of these families to do the same,” says Gerber, a chief executive of a New York-based hedge fund and a former AIPAC board member.
Prisoners Club chief Qadura Fares came out fervently against Abbas’s decree earlier today, calling on the PA president to immediately reverse it.
The PA, in its announcement of the reform, said it was moving its database containing information on the families of prisoners and slain attackers from the Social Welfare Ministry to a new independent body called the Palestinian National Foundation for Economic Empowerment, which will be allocating all social welfare payments moving forward.
Gerber questioned why this move was being taken if all families would be required to re-apply for welfare payments. “It’s because they’re still going to be designated as prisoners or martyrs.”
US government legal experts reviewed the PA’s reform plan during the Biden administration and said it would place Ramallah in compliance with the 2018 Taylor Force Act that Gerber helped write if implemented as stated.
Those same legal experts continue to serve under the Trump administration, which will be responsible for reviewing the PA’s implementation of the reform. Asked if he trusts those experts’ judgment, Gerber responds, “I trust that they’re all well-meaning.”
“It’s too early to tell [whether the reform is real]. The decree is ambiguous about whether the terrorists will get the same [amount of money],” he says.
The shift to a welfare system will mean 40,000 recipients of the prisoner and martyr stipends will begin receiving far less than what they had been allocated to date, Gerber claimed. “If you don’t see protests on the street of these 40,000 people who are newly impoverished, you know that it’s all a shell game.”
The correlation between cuts to income and protests is not always clear, though. Nearly 200,000 PA public sector employees were receiving half of their salary for months last year due to the Israeli withholding of Palestinian tax revenues. Over 100,000 have had their work permits for jobs in Israel and its settlements terminated since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught. And yet, there have been no massive Palestinian protests in the West Bank.
