The Palestinian Authority’s legal system has effectively declared that its pay-for-slay program is not a policy choice. It is the law. A Ramallah administrative court ruled on May 4 that the PA must resume salary payments to prisoner Firas Ahmad Hassan.
His stipend had been suspended since mid-2025. The court found the suspension unlawful under Article 22 of the amended Palestinian Authority Basic Law.
Attorney Ahmad Nasra, who brought the case, argued that cutting Hassan’s pay violated PA law. The court agreed. The finance minister was ordered to restore the payments.
That is the narrow ruling. The broader one is what the Independent Commission for Human Rights has flagged.
The commission indicated the decision could serve as a precedent for reinstating payments to roughly 1,600 other prisoners whose stipends were also suspended. The figure is not small. It represents the entire population of prisoners the PA had quietly cut off.
The timing matters. For months, PA President Mahmoud Abbas had been telling Washington and European capitals that the old pay-for-slay system was dead. In February 2025, he issued a decree.
It shifted disbursements to a new body under his office. The mechanism was supposedly need-based welfare, not rewards for violence.
Reuters reported at the time that the full details had not been disclosed. Palestinian Media Watch warned it was a rebranding operation — a shell game aimed at Western donor governments who fund the PA. The Ramallah court has now confirmed PMW’s reading.
The legal and political commitment to paying prisoners remains intact. The court did not rule on a policy dispute.
It ruled that the PA’s own Basic Law mandates these payments. The PA cannot stop them without changing its foundational legal text. It has not done so.
This is not a bureaucratic footnote. It is a strategic exposure. The PA had been selling a narrative of reform.
The court has gutted it. The ruling makes clear that the underlying incentive structure for terrorism — payments to prisoners convicted of attacks on Israelis — is not a temporary program or a corruption problem.
It is constitutional. The United States has long pressed the PA to end the system. The Taylor Force Act, passed by Congress in 2018, conditions U.S. aid to the PA on ending prisoner payments.
The PA has never fully complied. The February 2025 decree was its latest attempt to appear compliant while preserving the substance.
The Ramallah court has now shown that even that cosmetic fix was legally unsustainable. Attorney Nasra’s argument was straightforward. The prisoner had a legal right to his salary.
Suspending it was illegal under PA law. The court agreed. That means any future PA effort to suspend payments will face the same legal challenge.
The precedent is now set. The 1,600 other prisoners can cite this ruling.
The Independent Commission for Human Rights has already signaled it will support those claims. The PA now faces a choice it cannot finesse. It can change its Basic Law — a politically explosive move that would openly admit the pay-for-slay system is unconstitutional under any reformist narrative.
Or it can resume payments and admit to foreign donors that the February 2025 decree was a fraud. Or it can defy its own courts and trigger a constitutional crisis.
None of those options are good for the PA’s public relations campaign. The court has forced the issue. The pay-for-slay system is out of the closet.
It is not a program that can be hidden. It is the law.
