Abbas Ousts Finance Chief Amid ‘Pay-for-Slay’ Reform Turmoil

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed his finance minister, Omar Bitar, on Monday after an internal investigation found that he had authorized payments to Palestinian prisoners using the old compensation model that tied stipends to the length of their sentences rather than to financial need, according to Palestinian officials familiar with the matter, Times of Israel reports.

Earlier that day, the PA’s official Wafa news agency announced that Estephan Salameh, who had been serving as the Planning and International Cooperation Minister, would assume the role of finance minister. The brief statement gave no reason for the abrupt change.

Sources within Ramallah said Bitar’s removal came after it was discovered that he had permitted payments through outdated channels to some inmates and their families, sidestepping the welfare reform Abbas had introduced earlier this year. That reform made clear that aid would be distributed solely based on economic hardship rather than on the duration of imprisonment.

The shift away from the old model was a key demand from the United States, Israel, and several Arab and European governments that have accused the PA of encouraging violence through what they dubbed the “pay-to-slay” program.

Abbas formally ended the controversial system with a decree in February and reaffirmed before the United Nations General Assembly in September that it was no longer active.

However, even as the new welfare structure took effect, officials discovered that a small number of families still received payments through the previous mechanism — in some cases, including prisoners jailed after the reform’s launch.

The revelations have put Ramallah under intense pressure from the families of prisoners angered by the sharp reduction of benefits they had depended on for years. A Palestinian official said the firing of Bitar was intended to send a clear message that Abbas was “serious about implementing the prisoner payment reform.”

But Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar dismissed that explanation. “Dismissing the Palestinian Authority’s finance minister will not absolve the dismisser, Mahmoud Abbas, and the PA of their complicity in pay-for-slay and responsibility for the ongoing payments to terrorists and their families,” he wrote on X. “The Palestinian Authority is trying to fool the world. It won’t work. The truth is stronger.”

In September, Ramallah circulated a report to its European and Arab donors claiming the new welfare system was complete and the old program fully phased out. The document, prepared by the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution, said that new eligibility criteria had been adopted, notifying over 3,000 individuals that they no longer qualified for aid, while more than 2,000 households became newly eligible.

Still, because Israel has continued to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in Palestinian tax revenues, Ramallah has struggled to issue the first round of welfare payments. According to the September update, stipends for June would be calculated using the new standards.

While that was true for most recipients, some families reportedly received retroactive lump-sum payments through the Finance Ministry itself rather than the newly formed institution — a violation that ultimately cost Bitar his job.

For years, Palestinian leaders defended the old stipends as a legitimate form of social welfare and as compensation for families affected by what they described as Israel’s harsh military justice system. But Western nations and Israel repeatedly condemned the policy, arguing that it rewarded acts of violence and undermined peace efforts.

Following years of external pressure, Abbas began building a replacement system based on financial need during Joe Biden’s presidency. He delayed implementing it publicly until after US President Donald Trump returned to office, hoping the change would earn goodwill with Washington.

The restructuring was also aimed at satisfying the requirements of the US Taylor Force Act of 2018, which blocks aid to the PA as long as payments to prisoners are tied to their time served.

Earlier this year, the PA invited Washington to send officials to Ramallah to verify that the new program was in place. The offer went unanswered, with the Trump administration showing little interest in Palestinian internal affairs. Still, a senior PA official said on Monday that Ramallah hopes a US audit delegation will arrive in early 2026 to inspect the system.

American officials have not commented on Abbas’s decision to dismiss Bitar.

Hady Amr, who served as the US special representative for Palestinian affairs under Biden, said the PA had “spent considerable time and energy conveying to the international community — including the prior and current US administrations, European and Arab countries — that they were ending the framework of their program and creating a genuine needs-based social safety net that would apply equally to all.”

“Notwithstanding expected internal pressures, and whatever happened [regarding Bitar’s firing], it’s clear that if the PA does not move forward [with this reform] as it has publicly committed to do, it will have lost credibility, especially with those it had made these commitments to,” Amr added.

{Matzav.com}