Does the Palestinian Authority Fund Terrorism? | Explained

people will do a lot to get rich quick games rich quick planning the stock market investing in crypto getting tricked into a pyramid scheme murdering innocent people hold up what turns out the Palestinian Authority offers desperate people a horrible way to make a quick Buck all you have to do is attack some Israelis and you and your family are set for life the PA calls this program a martyr fund the rest of the world knows it as pay to slay so how does this program work and why hasn't anyone sto

pped it yet I don't know about you but when I think about the purpose of a government I imagine things like maintaining Law and Order developing the economy building infrastructure giving citizens something to complain about well the Palestinian Authority definitely gives Israelis and Palestinians lots of things to complain about like the fact that they openly fund murder but this story starts before the PA even existed all the way back to the 1960s Israel's borders have always been shall we say

flimsy from the very first day as a state Arab infiltrators have been sneaking in for a variety of reasons some were trying to get back to the fields they had once worked before 1948 some were there to steal Des to feed their families put others cross the border for more Sinister reasons like murder but sneaking into a foreign country is a risky proposition especially when you're technically at War fun fact even though the war of independence ended in 1949 Israel's neighbors didn't recognize it

s right to exist and even maintain Declarations of War for decades okay maybe not such a fun fact when you go Behind Enemy Lines there's no guarantee you'll come back and that leaves your family which is already most likely living in power poverty without a breadwinner so in the PLO formed in 1964 they came up with a creative solution they didn't want to stop their people from infiltrating into Israel Israel was the enemy the more infiltrations the better we think that the only way is to carry o

ur arms and to fight and this with what we are doing but they needed a way to incentivize infiltrators so they created a twisted version of Social Security anyone who crossed into Israel to do some damage could rely on generous payments from the PLO that way the families wouldn't be left destitute if their primary earner got caught killed or injured the PLO the IRA and the hot dog stand behind the warehouse name three businesses that have better health care plans than Dunder Mifflin now the PLO

may have styled itself as the official representative of the Palestinian people but it wasn't exactly a government in fact Israel viewed it as a terrorist organization for the first three decades of its existence the Palestinian people didn't really have a government until the Oslo peace agreements which were meant to set up the infrastructure needed to build a future Palestinian state that meant they needed a government that's how the Palestinian Authority or PA was born governments even transi

tional governments like the PA need money to function turns out that even basic governance is expensive so countries from all over the world started donating hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the p PA even Israel agreed to collect and set aside tax revenue on their behalf the PA was supposed to do all the boring stuff the governments are supposed to take care of maintaining security to stop attacks on Israel maintaining basic Law and Order and taking care of bureaucratic stuff like is

suing business licenses and setting up a social safety net this is all stuff that most people in functioning countries kind of take for granted and the PA did do some of that but they took the social safety net in an unusual Direction They said set aside a portion of their budget to continue the program that the PLO had started sneaky into Israel for nefarious purposes but worried about your family's income don't worry the PA would take care of you it was like a messed up version of workers comp

with one crucial difference workers comp pays people who get injured doing normal jobs like construction the PA so-called martyr fund pays people who are killed or imprisoned for terrorism or as they call it the resistance against the occupation that's right a transitional government which was established as part of a peace agreement was openly paying its citizens to kill Israelis this is nonsense in fact a Top PA official boasted that the so-called martyr fund had paid out roughly $4.5 million

annually between 1995 and 2002 in other words as the PA was negotiating with Israel it was paying its own people to kill Israelis but negotiations broke down entirely in late 2000 shortly afterwards the second inata started between 2002 and 2004 the PA handed out $25 million a year to the suicide bombers and gunmen who attacked Israelis in markets movie theaters and cafes for the math nerds watching that's an increase of over 500% and the PA is still paying out terrorists for their role in the

second andata the guy who designed the bomb that killed 15 people in 2002 is still getting his monthly check so is the bomber's family in fact these payments are guaranteed through PA Law the prisoners and released prisoners law is a long and boring name for a program that legally guarantees a payout for terrorists but the text of the law which was expanded in 2013 is anything but boring its stipulations are frankly Bonkers in jail for 6 months you'll get a little something each month in jail fo

r a year on top of your monthly salary in twice annual clothing allowance you're looking at free or subsidized tuition and health insurance plus a little bonus for when you get released those are better benefits than some American jobs in jail for 10 years congrats you're now officially guaranteed a job in the government hey palestin Authority Pro tip your government might run a little better if you hire people based on qualifications rather than a body count just a thought if this sounds insane

well that's because it is how is the PA allowed to get away with blatantly funding terrorism well Israel has tried its best to disincentivize terrorists it demolishes their houses sets up restrictions on who can enter the country and builds checkpoints and security fences to keep potential terrorists out all of these moves are considered controversial particularly the demolition of houses critics say that this unfairly punishes the terrorist family who didn't commit any crimes but Advocates of

the policy say yeah do huh that's the point of deterrence thing is this kind of deterrence doesn't really work if you're guaranteed the funds to just build a new house if you want to cut off terrorism you got to follow the money and it wasn't until 2018 that Western countries began cutting off Aid to the PA see in the spring of 2016 a young Palestinian from the West Bank went on a stabbing spree that injured 11 civilians and killed one that civilian was an American Veteran named Taylor Force he

wasn't Jewish he wasn't Israeli he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time it is with profound sadness That We Gather today and bow our heads in Fellowship as Taylor Force begins his journey home two years later the US passed the Taylor force act which Froze all financial aid to the PA until they pulled the plug on pay to slay so what the Taylor force act will do is give the Palestinian Authority a Clear Choice you can either stop stop doing what you're doing or you won't have our money at

least to do it with other nations quickly followed suit passing laws that froze or restricted Aid to the PA with other countries in its Corner Israel passed its own freezing law since 2018 Israel has withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue from the PA each year now I want to be clear about exactly what this means these freezing policies do not apply to humanitarian Aid vaccines medical supplies and other basic necessities aren't affected plus Israel isn't taking the PA's tax rev

enue for itself it's just setting aside the funds for a day that the PA agrees to officially end P to slay so are these policies working unfortunately no you can accuse the PA of a lot of things but a lack of creativity isn't one of them they've done a very good job of exploiting loopholes to their advantage they've designated their pay to slave funds as welfare payments by the occupying power or its deceitful disto distortions of social welfare to families of prisoners and martyrs they've estab

lished their own financial institutions free from International regulations they've straight up lied about where the money goes I don't want anybody to misunderstand us all what we do is we are here to help people orphan kids families and so on we are giving people assistance we are not encouraging people to kill more Israelis so despite the Taylor force act the US resumed paying the PA in 2021 spending half a billion dollars to Aid the Palestinians in the West Bank in Gaza now this money isn't

all supposed to go to the PA lots of it goes to unra and US Aid programs but it would be naive to assume that some of this money doesn't trickle into the PA's bank accounts in the PA's 2018 budget abas has allocated 355 million dollar to the pay to slay policy that's 7% of the total PA budget 7% imagine all that money spent to encourage the killing of Jews and though Palestinians hate the PA they love the payments a whopping 91% approve of the pay to slay program president Mahmud Abbas who is al

most universally hated among Palestinians has no incentive to stop the payments they're one of the only shreds of Leverage he has left considering that 60% of Palestinians are calling for the dissolution of the PA Abbas is going to cling to whatever he can to keep himself in power because ultimately Palestinian government governments have never really cared about their people if they did they'd spend their billions in Aid money on you know aiding Palestinians but it's a lot more fun to use donor

money to line your own pockets and it's a lot easier to exploit young men and women to attack Israelis than to actually do the hard work of governing the PA has proven that it can funnel its resources towards social welfare unfortunately in order to really benefit you have to kill an Israeli or two first if you really believe that your fight is a righteous one being killed or imprisoned is almost a badge of honor because to most Palestinians killing an Israeli civilian isn't an act of terrorism

it's an act of resistance one that 75% of Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza support and that is a lot more dangerous than the pis slay program governments can be toppled regimes can change Aid can be cut off but convincing an entire people that their neighbor isn't going anywhere that peace is preferable to war that's a lot more difficult until the majority of Palestinians accept that Israel is here to stay they will keep pursuing its destruction which means Israel will keep fighting

back the cycle won't stop until Palestinians and Israelis actively choose to stop it and if the PA's programs not to mention its rhetoric are any indication we have a long way to go before that happens