Terrorism

The demonstrators were also seen carrying Egyptian flags, apparently showing support for Cairo’s mediation efforts toward a ceasefire agreement and hostage deal in recent weeks.

Shachar Kleiman

(Israel Hayom via JNS)

Social media footage published on Wednesday, including by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, showed mass protests against Hamas in northern Gaza, with people holding up signs and chanting, “Hamas out,” “We want to live” and “Listen, listen, all people. Beit Lahia is not Hamas,” referring to the city in the northern Strip.

The demonstrators were also seen carrying Egyptian flags, apparently showing support for Cairo’s mediation efforts toward a ceasefire agreement and hostage deal.

These protests have continued sporadically for several weeks, featuring curses and calls against the terror organization. Hamas has attempted to suppress the demonstrations through threats and executions, but without success.

Originally published by Israel Hayom.

Image: Palestinians in northern Gaza take part in an anti-Hamas protest, calling to end the war with Israel on March 26, 2025. Photo by Flash90.

“These are people that have been really, really, horribly treated. I’ve never seen anything like it,” the U.S. president said.

JNS Staff

(JNS)

“We are trying very hard to get the hostages out,” U.S. President Donald Trump told the press during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday.

“We’re looking at another ceasefire. We’ll see what happens. But we … want to get the hostages out. Israeli people want the hostages out more than anything,” Trump said, adding that Netanyahu was working “very hard” toward that goal.

Referring to a meeting he held with former hostages in the Oval Office on March 5, Trump said he’d asked them if Hamas had shown any sign of human kindness, if they offered them extra food or told them that they would be OK.

“They said, “No, they didn’t do that. They’d slap us.’ The hatred is unbelievable,” he said.

“They lived in a pipe, not really a tunnel. It was a pipe. And they always thought they were suffocating. They were going to suffocate. And then they’d open up the pipe, and it was like three-and-a-half feet high. You know, we hear tunnels—bad—but pipes are worse,” the president said.

“They were amazing to me because they seemed to be pretty normal, not scarred. But I guarantee underneath, they have to be scarred,” Trump said.

“One was there for 356 days. Another was there for 180 days. … These are people that have been really, really, horribly treated. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.

Trump also expressed his surprise at how the parents of hostages who had died in captivity still talked about their children as if they were alive. “They said, ‘Sir, my son is dead. It is just as important to bring that body back home.’”

He noted that most of those in captivity are young, and yet only 24 of the 59 hostages are estimated to remain alive. He referred back to the three hostages, who emerged from captivity looking “exactly like the pictures that I saw from the 1940s, the concentration camps.”

“This is unbelievable. We’re going back into a chapter in history that is one of the worst ever,” he said.

Trump expressed shock at the time at the condition of Israeli hostages Or Levy, 34, Eli Sharabi, 52, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56, who were released after 491 days following their abduction during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Speaking aboard Air Force One on Feb. 9, Trump said of the three men, who were released a day earlier, that they “look like Holocaust survivors. They were in horrible condition—emaciated. It looked like something from many years ago.”

At some point, we are going to lose our patience with Hamas, he warned. “They [the hostages] look like they haven’t had a meal in a month. There’s no reason for that. I don’t know how much longer we can take it.”

Image: U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House, April 7, 2025. Credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO.

Published on Mon, 07 Apr 2025 18:43:43 -0400. Original article link

Deif and Sinwar asked the Quds Force commander to finance “the annihilation of Israel and the fight against the U.S.—and they got it.”

(Israel Hayom via JNS)

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz revealed, for the first time, communications between Tehran and slain Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar.

“This is definitive proof of Iran‘s support for Hamas’s plan to destroy Israel and for the October 7, [2023], massacre,” Katz said. “Deif and Sinwar demanded $500 million from the Quds Force commander to support the annihilation of Israel and the fight against the U.S.—and they got it.”

Katz visited the IDF’s Intelligence and Technological Systems Unit (AMASHT) on Saturday and received a briefing from unit commanders on its intelligence and operational activities.

“I’m here today visiting the AMASHT unit—a special unit established during the Swords of Iron war and composed of reservists with extensive civilian-sector expertise, who developed national-level capabilities that did not yet exist,” he said.

He added that this intelligence capability holds critical material physically collected from deep inside enemy territory, including Hamas archives, Hezbollah documents and other sensitive intelligence sources.

“Today I am presenting, for the first time, a transcript of conversations found in the tunnels of senior Hamas officials in Gaza, which proves a direct connection between Iran and Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, as part of Iran’s support for Hamas’s plan to destroy Israel. The document shows they requested $500 million from the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force to help destroy the State of Israel,” Katz said.

According to the document, the head of the Quds Force’s Palestinian Affairs Branch, Hassan Izadi, responded affirmatively to the request, saying that despite Iran’s dire economic situation and the hardships faced by the Iranian people, the regime would continue funding Hamas, because the fight against Israel and the U.S. remains the regime’s top priority.

Katz concluded, “Iran is the head of the snake. Despite all its denials, it continues to finance and promote terrorism across all fronts—from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria to Judea and Samaria, and now even with the Houthis in Yemen—all under the banner of Israel’s destruction.

“Israel will do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and will continue to strike at its proxies across the region until the Iranian axis of evil is dismantled and defeated.”

Image: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the ruins of his Gaza office, May 27, 2021. Credit: Courtesy.

Originally published by Israel Hayom.

The video showed the hostage with his brother Yair, shortly before the latter was released. Netanyahu slammed Hamas for its “cruel propaganda.”

JNS Staff

(JNS)

The Hamas terrorist organization released on Saturday evening footage of Eitan Horn, an Israeli abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, Gazan invasion of the northwestern Negev and still held captive in the Strip.

The video was apparently filmed a short while before Eitan, now aged 38, was separated from his brother Yair, who was released from captivity on Feb. 15.

The brothers were shown in the footage holding each other and bursting in tears. Eitan Horn speaks to the camera, pleading with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sign an agreement on the second phase of the ceasefire, so he can be freed as well.

The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement, “The terrorist organization Hamas released another cruel propaganda video this evening, in which our hostages are forced to serve as tools for psychological warfare.

“Israel will not be deterred by Hamas’s propaganda. We will continue to work relentlessly to bring all our hostages home and achieve all of Israel’s war objectives,” the statement concludes.

The Horn family, authorizing the publication of the video, said in a statement: “It breaks our heart to see Eitan in this difficult situation, saying goodbye to his brother Yair, who is being freed while Eitan remains held in Hamas’s hell for 512 days now.”

It continues, “You can see the despair and fear in Eitan’s eyes. Since Yair returned to us, he hasn’t stopped thinking about and working for Eitan, and all the other hostages he met in captivity who are still there. We demand from the decision-makers: Look Eitan in the eyes. Don’t end the agreement that has already brought dozens of hostages back to us. They are running out of time! Bring everyone home, now, in all at once.”

At least three other hostages are seen in captivity with Eitan and Yair Horn, two of whom have their faces blurred.

The third abductee whose face is visible, American-Israeli Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, was released on the same day that Yair was handed over to Israel, along with Alexander (“Sasha”) Troufanov, 29, a dual Russian-Israel citizen who had been held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist organization that operates in Gaza.

All three men were taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist assault on the community, which was among the hardest hit. One in every four residents was killed or kidnapped.

Image: Eitan Horn, 38. Credit: Courtesy of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

A senior official from the terrorist group urged an escalation of “resistance in all its forms in Jerusalem.”

Shachar Kleiman

(Israel Hayom via JNS)

With Ramadan set to begin at sundown on Friday, Hamas is aiming to spark a wave of terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, including on the Temple Mount.

On Thursday, Harun Nasser al-Din, the head of Hamas’s Jerusalem Office, who is currently abroad, declared that there must be “full confrontation against the occupation’s incursions, an uprising against its projects, and no surrender to attempts at Judaization and expulsion.”

Another senior Hamas official urged an escalation of “resistance in all its forms in Jerusalem,” a clear incitement to terrorist attacks.

Al-Din also referenced the demolition of illegally built structures in Jerusalem, accusing Israel of implementing “malicious plans for expulsion and Judaization projects.” He further emphasized that “all plans and schemes will be shattered by the escalation of the resistance in all its forms.”

Throughout the week, Hamas seized on Israeli police recommendations to limit the number of Muslim worshippers allowed on the Temple Mount during Ramadan, proposing a cap of 10,000 people at a time.

In response, the terrorist organization declared that restricting the number of worshippers constitutes “a dangerous escalation and precedent aimed at undermining freedom of worship at Al-Aqsa mosque.”

Hamas further warned Israel about “the consequences of implementing these recommendations,” stating that it would bear full responsibility for any resulting escalation.

At the same time, Hamas is not ruling out an extension of the first phase of the hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza. If additional phases proceed, they will coincide with the volatile period of Ramadan, which has seen terrorist attacks in the past.

Overnight on Wednesday, 642 terrorists were released as part of the deal, including individuals who were freed from prison and sent to eastern Jerusalem. This marks the last hostage release of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, during which 33 captives were returned, including eight who were dead.

Hamas spokesman Abd al-Latif al-Qanoua told the Al-Araby channel on Thursday morning that “the organization is ready to extend the first phase of the hostage deal or merge the two phases according to red lines.”

He further claimed that the first phase of the agreement has been completed and the terrorist organization upheld all its commitments despite Israel’s “ongoing stalling.” Hamas has set several conditions for the second phase, including a “permanent” end to the war in Gaza and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Strip.

This is an edited version of a story originally published by Israel Hayom.

Image: Palestinians wave Hamas flags outside the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem during the last Friday of Ramadan, April 29, 2022. Photo by Jamal Awad/Flash90.

Finding a place is a thorny issue because each time Palestinians have moved elsewhere, they have caused trouble for their hosts.

A.J. Caschetta

(The Investigative Project on Terrorism via JNS)

When U.S. President Donald Trump proposed to relocate more than 1 million people from Gaza while the area is being rebuilt, many derided it as a combination of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia. Others thought it too ridiculous to take seriously. But more people are coming around to his way of thinking. Journalist Liel Leibovitz now argues, “We must embrace this proposal, because at its heart is the one true and inescapable sentiment: Israelis can no longer be expected to live in proximity to those who desire nothing more than their death.”

Palestinians there who don’t want to fight Israelis and who have sought to leave the embattled strip of land are perhaps the world’s only genuine refugees not been permitted to leave a war zone, but where to send them and their bloodthirsty neighbors who live for the opportunity to kill is perhaps the biggest problem with the proposal. Those who protest the loudest about Trump’s alleged “ethnic cleansing” plan are more interested in exploiting Gaza residents for the purpose of destroying Israel than helping them. Don’t expect Spain, Norway or Ireland to welcome any of them.

And what about Muslim and Arab nations? Are they too racist or “Islamophobic” for endorsing the plan? The United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, recently told an interviewer, “I don’t see an alternative to what’s being proposed.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Sadanand Dhume took up the topic in a recent column titled “If Indians and Pakistanis can relocate, why can’t Gazans?” Dhume noted that “many population transfers have taken place over the last century … Only in the Palestinian case has the refugee question festered endlessly.”

In a Jan. 26, press release, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called Trump’s proposal “dangerous nonsense,” invoking the ethnic cleansing trope. This is in stark contrast to the joy that CAIR executive director Nihad Awad expressed on Nov. 24, 2023, over the Oct. 7 attack which he likened to a jailbreak. Gaza is a “concentration camp,” and its people “decided to break the siege” and “throw … down the[ir] shackles,” he enthused.

Of course, the Gazans who carried out the Oct. 7 attack wanted out of Gaza. They wanted Israel. Now Awad wants them to stay in their “concentration camp” so that their resistance will continue.

Hamas supporters like Awad know that moving people out will make it more difficult for Hamas to survive. Without Palestinian children and Israeli hostages to use as human shields, Hamas doesn’t stand a chance of surviving the Israel Defense Forces’s efforts to eradicate it.

CAIR’s press release also claims that “the only way to achieve a just, lasting peace is to force the Israeli government to end its occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people.” A peaceful Gaza that is not part of a Palestinian state contradicts the generational imperative for a “Palestine from the river to the sea” and makes the chances of a “two-state solution” more remote. CAIR would love to see Hamas rewarded for the barbaric rape-torture-infanticide pogrom on Oct. 7, 2023, with a sovereign state.

The main reason for opposing Trump’s plan is sheer logistics. Where would the Gazans go while Gaza is being rebuilt, and which ones would be permitted to return? This is the thorniest problem because each time Palestinians have moved to a new diaspora they have caused trouble for their hosts. Throughout the Arab and Muslim world, Palestinian options are limited by their past conduct. Few nations are interested in taking the residents of Gaza because Palestinians have worn out their welcome wherever they have gone.

Egypt and Jordan are the two most likely destinations for Gazans relocated, either temporarily or permanently, due to propinquity and racial homogeneity. Aside from their desire to destroy and annex Israel, Gazans are ethnically, linguistically and culturally indistinguishable from Egyptians and Jordanians. However, both nations have been down this road before.

Egypt annexed Gaza after the 1948 War of Independence and refused to allow Arabs (who had not yet begun calling themselves “Palestinians”) Egyptian citizenship. It has had an uneasy relationship with both the PLO and Hamas ever since. Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (whom Trump once called his “favorite dictator”) has, from time to time, flooded Hamas tunnels, killing untold numbers of Gazans, because he felt threatened by their militancy. Unless it is forced into a corner, Egypt is unlikely to accept large numbers of Palestinians ever.

Likewise, Jordan knows what admitting more than a million Palestinians will mean to Jordanian sovereignty.

After the 1948 war, Jordan (unlike Egypt and the other Arab nations that attacked the nascent Jewish State) admitted hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees. The 1954 Nationality Law granted Jordanian citizenship to “any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948 and resides ordinarily in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on the publication date of this law.”

After the Six-Day War, Israel expelled the PLO to Jordan along with some 200,000 more Palestinians. There, they began a civil war that only ended after some 70,000 Jordanians were killed and the PLO was again expelled, this time to Lebanon, where it promptly started a civil war.

In 1988, Jordanian citizenship was revoked from Palestinians. As Anis F. Kassim, a Jordanian lawyer put it, “more than 1.5 million Palestinians went to bed on 31 July 1988 as Jordanian citizens, and woke up on 1 August 1988 as stateless persons.”

The current king of Jordan, Abdullah II, seems unwilling to accept any Gazans beyond the 2,000 “cancer children” he told Trump he would admit for treatment.

What about other Arab nations? Kuwait will never accept Palestinians. Before the first Persian Gulf War, thousands of Palestinians lived in Kuwait, working jobs Kuwaitis didn’t want. But when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded in 1990, Palestinians were on his side, and Kuwaitis have never forgiven them. Any post-Gulf war Kuwaiti advocacy on their behalf is motivated by hatred of Israel not love of Palestinians.

How about Indonesia, the country with the greatest number of Muslims in the world? “Indonesia’s stance remains unequivocal: any attempts to displace or remove Gaza’s residents is entirely unacceptable,” said the country’s foreign affairs minister, according to the Jakarta Globe.

Morocco, a signatory to the Abraham Accords, has also been mentioned as a potential destination, but it clearly doesn’t want Palestinians within its borders. Besides, the United States already recognizes Morocco’s sovereignty over the western Sahara, so that carrot has been eaten.

The most interesting and unusual choices made public are Puntland and Somaliland, two autonomous regions within Somalia.

Puntland, which declared itself autonomous in 1998 and claimed in 2023 that it would function as an independent state, could benefit from a deal to accept Palestinians. Likewise, Somaliland declared itself independent from Somalia in 1992 and operates autonomously, even though no country has recognized its independence. Accepting Palestinians might pave the way for either Puntland’s or Somaliland’s recognition as a separate country, but it would also leave their fledgling states vulnerable to violence and susceptible to being taken over by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, the PLO and all the rest. It seems unlikely that either putative nation would risk achieving its goals by accepting Palestinian refugees.

Thus, Palestinians are left to live with the consequences of their decisions. Their inability to destroy Israel and unwillingness to abandon their dream of victory has kept them stateless and condemned their children to a life of misery. As Commentary’s John Podhoretz put it: “Like the Japanese and Germans in and after World War II, they have to be broken before they can be put back together as a functioning polis.”

After eight decades of militancy and refusal to accept any deal for a state that does not eliminate the State of Israel, Palestinians find themselves unwelcome throughout the world.

 Image: U.S. President Donald Trump hosts an expanded bilateral meeting and working lunch with King Abdullah II of Jordan and his son, Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah, at the White House, Feb. 11, 2025. Credit: Daniel Torok/White House.

The Israeli prime minister stated that the terror organization must give assurances that it won’t have future violations or stage humiliations.

(JNS)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated early on Sunday morning that the Jewish state is not releasing Palestinian prisoners who were slated to be freed as part of the deal with Hamas.

“In light of Hamas’s repeated violations, including the ceremonies that humiliate our hostages and the cynical exploitation of our hostages for propaganda purposes, it has been decided to delay the release of terrorists that was planned for yesterday until the release of the next hostages has been assured, and without the humiliating ceremonies,” Netanyahu stated, per an English translation provided by his office.

Image: Hamas terrorists watch a propaganda ceremony during which Israeli hostages are turned over to the Red Cross, Gaza Strip, Feb. 22, 2025. Credit: Ali Hassan/Flash90. | Ali Hassan/Flash90

There were no injuries as a result of the explosions.

(JNS)

Israeli security agencies are investigating multiple blasts that occurred in parked busses across the central Israeli city of Bat Yam on Thursday night as suspected terrorist attacks, according to local media reports.

There were no injuries as a result of the explosions, the Israel Police said.

This is a developing story.

Image: Courtesy JNS Article

The IDF and authorities are gearing up for emotional day as Hamas is poised to return four dead captives on Thursday.

Israel Hayom

(JNS)

Israel redeemed on Thursday the bodies of four fallen hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza: the three members of the Bibas family – mother Shiri, infant son Kfir, and his older brother Ariel, and Oded Lifshitz.

Although the Israeli government has made names public, official confirmation of the identity of hostages will only take place upon forensics analysis once the handover is complete. On Wednesday, it emerged that the names were not supposed to be made public, and there was a miscommunication between the IDF and the government.

Even before the announcement of the names, The Hostages and Missing Families Forum has urged the public to refrain from spreading rumors about the return of the fallen hostages and from contacting families regarding this matter.

In an official statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, it was announced: “The Coordinator for Captives and Missing Persons, Brigadier General (Ret.) Gal Hirsch, has updated the families of the hostages through IDF representatives. In this difficult hour, our hearts are with the grieving families. We will continue to provide reliable information as required and request to avoid spreading rumors and unofficial information.”

“Do not eulogize until there is final confirmation”

The Bibas family issued a statement urging patience. “If there is to be bitter news, we need to receive it through the proper channels after all identification procedures are completed. We ask not to eulogize our loved ones until there is confirmation after final identification,” it said.

The Lifshitz family released a similar statement, noting that they had hoped things would turn differently but won’t give up just yet. “These hours are not simple for us, after being informed that our beloved Oded is on the list of deceased hostages to be returned to Israel on Thursday, after being taken alive from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. For 502 days we hoped and prayed for a different ending, but until we receive absolute certainty our journey will not end, and even afterward we will continue to fight until the return of the last hostage. We ask the media and the public not to contact us regarding this matter at present and to respect our privacy.”

Early morning: Handover process to begin

The initial stage involves the Red Cross receiving the fallen from Hamas at a predetermined location before transferring them to the IDF. Following the transfer, a military memorial ceremony will take place inside Gaza, featuring the Israeli flag, a salute ceremony, and a rabbi reciting from the Book of Psalms.

Dr. Gilad Bodenheimer, who heads Mental Health Services at the Ministry of Health, has advised against extended viewing of broadcasts covering the return: “We anticipate an extremely complex day as we receive the fallen hostages, and strongly recommend that the public limit their media exposure and minimize their viewing of Hamas psychological warfare tactics.”

Identification process

Following their return to Israeli territory, the coffins will then be transported under police escort directly to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for identification. There, experts will conduct tests to determine both the cause and time of death.

The institute will employ standard identification methods including imaging scans, DNA sample extraction and laboratory analysis, and comparison with existing medical records such as dental X-rays. Reference samples have already been prepared, including DNA profiles provided by Israel Police containing genetic material from the relevant fallen.

The IDF states that the identification process may take up to 48 hours, depending on the condition of the remains. The military is emphasizing the importance of avoiding rumor spread and urging patience during this sensitive period.

The families of the hostage casualties will be integral to the entire process. At their request, they will remain at home rather than at a designated location, accompanied by IDF representatives. They will observe the military ceremony in real-time, with documentation to be distributed afterward. The IDF will inform the families of the identification results before any public announcement.

Professor Chen Kugel, who directs the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, elaborated: “We will exhaust every possibility to determine the circumstances of death. This isn’t always achievable, particularly with fallen who arrive after an extended period. Our commitment is to do everything possible to provide answers to the families about what happened to their loved ones.”

The confidential clause 

Political officials clarify that this represents an unpublicized portion of Phase I, whereby eight hostages who died in captivity will be returned in two stages during the current phase. In exchange, Israel will free women and children detained in Gaza after Oct. 7.

Simultaneously, mediating parties are preparing for discussions about the deal’s second phase. Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari stated Tuesday that negotiations for the second phase haven’t officially commenced, though he confirmed that delegations from both Israel and the Hamas terror organization are present in Doha.

Image:  Pictures of Shiri Bibas and her children Kfir and Ariel who are held hostage in Hamas captivity hang outside the protest tent calling for the release of Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip, outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem, Feb. 19, 2025. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.

The Palestinian Authority is playing a shell game, where it shifts around resources to make it look that it’s not behind the terror payment program, according to observers.

David Isaac

(JNS)

The decree by the Palestinian Authority on Monday that it has restructured its terrorist payment program has been widely misrepresented as signaling the end of its pay-for-slay program, long-time observers told JNS, noting that reports of pay-for-slay’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

The announcement, published on the P.A.’s English-language WAFA news site, said the P.A. was transferring its payment allocation system from a ministry to an “independent” foundation.

It didn’t mention ending pay for Slay, or what it calls its “Martyrs’ Fund,” in which Arabs, many of whom sit in Israeli prisons, are rewarded stipends for having carried out attacks against Jews.

Itamar Marcus, founder and director of watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), told JNS of a telling exchange between Fatah, the ruling party of the P.A., and Hamas.

Hamas, criticizing the move, said that Fatah, the ruling party of the P.A., had abandoned the “martyrs,” i.e. prisoners.

“Sons of the Homeland,” a Telegram channel used by Fatah’s Bethlehem branch took umbrage at Hamas for publishing a “truncated version of the news”—that is, mispresenting the report to suggest that the P.A. was, in fact, canceling payments to terrorists.

Marcus quoted the Fatah-aligned channel: “The full news states that the salaries of the martyrs and printers have not and will not be affected, as all families that previously benefited from the law, regulations and systems will continue to be subject to the same standards.”

“Translation: the P.A. continues to fund and reward terrorism,” Marcus said.

‘Three-card Mahmoud’

Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, director of the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform in the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told JNS that the P.A. is merely playing “a shell game, three-card monte, or if you will, three-card Mahmoud.”

The P.A. has tried pulling the wool over Western eyes before, Hirsch said. In 2014, when the pay-for-slay program first made news and the P.A. felt that its funding was threatened, it declared that it was closing the Ministry of Prisons and no longer paying terrorist salaries.

“They announced it with great fanfare,” recalled Marcus. “What we saw internally was that they were opening in its place a PLO Commission of Prisoners. The Minister of Prisoners was going to be the Commissioner of Prisoners, and all the staff, all the buildings and the money were going to be the same but it wouldn’t be from the P.A.

“We’re all convinced something similar is happening now,” Marcus added, noting that Abbas is politically weak and Hamas is very popular because of its mass slaughter of Israelis. Abbas wouldn’t risk appearing to “hurt” the prisoners, he said. (Prisoner payments are extremely popular among the Arab public in P.A.-controlled areas with 91% supporting them, according to a 2017 poll.)

‘A wave of lawsuits’

Driving the timing of the P.A.’s announcement are a number of factors, the first of which is fear of liability.

It’s for this reason that the payment system is being transferred from a P.A. ministry to the so-called Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Foundation, described in the WAFA statement as an “independent legal personality.” Notably, it will be managed by a “board of trustees appointed by the president [Abbas].”

“They don’t want to be exposed to lawsuits in the States, and they would love to get the money that Israel is deducting in Israel,” Marcus said, referring to a 2018 Knesset law that ordered tax revenue Israel collects from the P.A. withheld to an amount equal to that which the P.A. pays to terrorists.

Hirsch agreed that the P.A.’s primary motive is to avoid liability, noting that the P.A. is reportedly seeking behind closed doors that the U.S. repeal the Taylor Force Act, which cuts financial aid to the P.A. until it ends payments to terrorists and their families.

Also on the liability front, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal in the coming months over whether the P.A. and Palestinian Liberation Organization can be sued in U.S. courts, Hirsch said.

In 2015, plaintiffs were awarded $218.5 million, automatically trebled to more than $650 million under America’s Anti-Terrorism Act. (The sum amounted to a significant portion of the P.A.’s annual budget at the time—$4.2 billion.)

That decision was overturned by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. But the U.S. Congress has since changed the law. “They enacted the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act of 2018. which said that if you are a country or a body that receives U.S aid, you cannot deny jurisdiction in the courts,” Hirsch said.

In the last two weeks, a slew of amicus briefs were filed with the Supreme Court, Hirsch noted, “including a position from the Department of Justice supporting the law, saying that it is clearly constitutional and that the court should override the lower court’s decision.”

There have also been recent laws in Israel smoothing the way for suing terror sponsors, including one that went into effect in the summer of 2024 establishing compensation of 10 million shekels ($2.8 million) for someone murdered by terrorists and 5 million shekels ($1.4 million) for a person who suffered a disability due to terror.

“There has been a wave of lawsuits against the P.A. under that law,” Hirsch said.

As recently as Sunday, the Jerusalem District Court put a freeze on $760 million in P.A. funds following a lawsuit filed by hundreds of victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

The P.A. understands that the strategy of bankrupting terrorism is working, Hirsh said.

Image: Palestinian Authority security personnel at the funeral of Ibrahim Jumaa, a member of the P.A. Preventive Security Service, in Nablus, on Dec. 27, 2024. Photo by Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90.