PA says external audit proves payments incentivizing attacks on Israelis have ended

The Palestinian Authority announced on Friday that an external audit of its new welfare program determined that it is being properly implemented to ensure that recipients are not incentivized to carry out terror attacks against Israelis.

The PA commissioned the audit from international consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal (A&M), hoping that a “kosher” stamp from a respected independent company would legitimize a reform of its welfare program that has long been demanded by the international community.

Ramallah also aims to combat assertions from both Israel and the US that PA payments to the families of terrorists have continued, despite the establishment of the new welfare program, which is said to condition stipends strictly on a recipient’s financial status, rather than the length of their prison sentence or whether they were injured or killed as a result of the conflict with Israel.

The PA is hoping that the results of the A&M audit will be enough to convince the US to conduct a similar review of the program so that Washington can deem Ramallah to be in compliance with Congressional legislation that bars aid to the PA so long as payments to prisoners based on the length of their sentence continue.

That law — the Taylor Force Act — requires the US secretary of state to update Congress every 180 days on whether the PA has ceased the old controversial welfare scheme, which critics dub pay-to-slay. The last report to Congress determined that it was still in place, but it relied exclusively on open-source information from the Israeli government and several organizations that have long been critical of the PA.

The PA has invited the US to conduct a more thorough review of the welfare program by sending a team of diplomats, treasury and intelligence officials to Ramallah to conduct an audit similar to the one just finished by A&M.

A Palestinian official suggested that conducting the audit now would make good use of the period leading up to the October Israeli elections, given that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has hobbled all other initiatives by Ramallah to boost ties with the US as the vote approaches.

Two Western diplomats briefed on the matter told The Times of Israel last month that A&M’s preliminary findings concluded that the reform was being properly implemented. A&M has since completed the audit, leading the PA to go public with what it said were the results.

The PA announcement didn’t include a copy of the audit itself, but a source familiar with the matter said Ramallah’s characterization of A&M’s findings was “largely accurate.”

Asked for comment, a State Department spokesperson on Saturday told The Times of Israel that the PA should publicly release the results of the audit.

“The PA announced that this audit occurred. However, it hasn’t released the results of it. We call on the PA to formally release the results of this audit so it can be subjected to public scrutiny,” the State Department spokesperson said in a statement.

The State Department statement also lamented that the audit apparently only looked into the new welfare program itself, suggesting that payments rewarding Palestinian prisoners could be continuing through other institutions — a common Israeli talking point dismissing the PA reform.

The results of the audit were first announced by the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution (PNEEI) — the welfare body revived by the PA in order to institute the reform authorized by Abbas in February 2025.

The PNEEI statement was then posted on the PA’s official Wafa news site. It did not include a copy of the audit itself, and A&M did not respond to a request for comment.

“The (A&M) report confirmed that eligibility under the Unified National Protection and Care Program is determined exclusively through poverty indicators and social and geographic criteria, based on the Proxy Means Test Formula (PMTF). The assessment process is founded on objective and evidence-based criteria that reflect the economic and social needs of households,” the PNEEI statement reads.

“The report also confirmed that none of the variables included in the PMTF scoring calculations or assistance amount calculations are associated with martyrs, detainees, prisoners, or injured persons, and that eligibility determination is based solely on approved poverty-related criteria,” it adds.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials have been working to discredit PA assertions that the payments to the families of prisoners have ended, with a European diplomat telling The Times of Israel that Israeli counterparts are requesting meetings to make the case against the veracity of Ramallah’s reform.

An Israeli official told The Times of Israel that the A&M audit is not to be taken seriously because intelligence agencies are required to detect the payments that are continuing under the table.

Pay-for-slay is still official Palestinian Authority policy.

As Euractiv reports, “It is not a phasing-out of the pay-for-slay policy. Rather, the money has gone underground through a systematic effort to make these channels covert and clandestine."

European taxpayers money…

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) July 9, 2026

The official said the PA is also continuing the policy of rewarding prisoners by giving jobs to some of those who have been released by Israel.

The Palestinian official argued that Israel’s campaign against the PA reform is part of a broader effort to delegitimize Ramallah and bring about its collapse.

Jerusalem is currently blocking the transfer of billions of dollars in Palestinian clearance revenues, which make up the bulk of the PA’s budget and have left Ramallah unable to pay the salaries of over 150,000 government employees.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has also taken steps to severely hobble the Palestinian banking sector, which, as a result, has been unable to make use of billions of shekels that are languishing in vaults in the West Bank.