FREE: URGENT DOSSIER: PALESTINIAN AUTHORITIES SYSTEMIC VIOLATIONS
Decree-driven reform masks entrenched indoctrination, torture, and power monopolies—Western oblivion abets impunity.
PALM SUNDAY, 2025: Mahmoud Abbas’s February 10 decree outwardly terminates the PA’s notorious “Martyrs Fund,” redirecting roughly $330 million in annual stipends into the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution (PNEEI), with allocations based strictly on poverty criteria. Behind the legal veneer, opaque mechanisms and political co-optation ensure that families of militants continue to receive preferential allowances under the guise of social welfare.
FOUNDATION FOR PAY-FOR-SLAY
The PA’s “Martyrs Fund” began in 1967 under the PLO and was absorbed by the PA in 1994. It bifurcated into:
Foundation for the Care of the Families of Martyrs—monthly payments to kin of Palestinians killed or wounded in violent incidents against Israelis.
Prisoners Fund—staggered monthly payments to incarcerated Palestinians based on sentence length.
By 2018, these pay-outs consumed 7 percent of the PA’s budget (≈$330 million/year), incentivizing violence and drawing sanctions like the U.S. Taylor Force Act (2018). On 10 February 2025, Abbas revoked all legislated provisions for these allowances, transferring responsibility to the autonomy-endowed PNEEI established in 2019 to reduce poverty by economically empowering vulnerable groups.
Yet ten days later, Abbas affirmed before the Fatah Revolutionary Council that “if we had one penny left, it will go to the martyrs and prisoners” and retained Qadura Fares as PLO prisoners commissioner—only to dismiss him days after for publicly decrying the decree’s hollowness. Palestinian Media Watch documented PA Postal Service disbursements of “martyrs’ salaries” well into March, underscoring the façade of reform.
CHILDREN OF MARTYRDOM
Education Ministry curricula and PA-run media cultivate a culture of sacrifice:
Textbooks portray shahada (martyrdom) as the apex life goal, replete with poems like “I see my death, but I hasten my steps towards it…”.
Arithmetic drills quantify “martyrs of the First Intifada” alongside textbook sums, embedding violence in daily lessons.
PA TV airs daily propaganda films for children lauding death for Allah as virtue, while youth centres and sporting events bear the names of high-profile terrorists, positioning them as role models.
Hamas summer camps in Gaza train minors in infantry tactics and weapons handling, effectively enlisting child soldiers under paramilitary auspices.
These indoctrination vectors breach the Convention on the Rights of the Child, normalizing violent extremism and precluding any future of co-existence.
“Were there a Christian to administer the government of the Mahommedans, he would have to undertake the transformation not only of every one of their political, civil, and religious institutions, but of their national character itself… till that time will we never see the dawn of peace.”
- William Ewart Gladstone
REPRESSION & STATE VIOLENCE
The PA enforces authoritarian control over West Bank civil society:
Arbitrary detention, torture, and solitary confinement are routine for activists, journalists, and students critical of authority. Methods include stress positions, beatings to genitals, electric shocks, and ‘reverse hanging,’ often in Jericho’s “slaughterhouse” prison.
Freedom of expression is curtailed via defamation, incitement, and anti-terror statutes. Bloggers, social-media users, and rap artists face night-time arrests and beatings, deterring dissent through terror.
No parliamentary elections since 2006 have stifled political renewal. Scheduled votes in 2021 and 2025 were postponed or cancelled, consolidating Abbas’s 17-year rule far beyond his four-year mandate.
MINORITY PERSECUTION
Under the Palestinian Basic Law and international covenants, LGBT+ Palestinians remain unprotected. Sharia courts in Gaza and West Bank security forces prosecute homosexuality as a capital crime, with documented stoning, beatings, and forced exile to Israel.
FORCED RECRUITMENT & IMPUNITY
Palestinian Media Watch and UN special rapporteurs report the PA equates “terrorist children” with soldiers. Minors are actively recruited into armed attacks; perpetrators of violence against civilians enjoy blanket amnesty, perpetuating cycles of lawlessness and fear.
A February decree did not dismantle the Martyrs Fund but rebranded its distribution channels. Indoctrination remains entrenched in PA institutions, torture and repression systematically crush dissent, and political pluralism is deadlocked. Minority communities are hunted, child soldiers mobilized, and violence glorified—all under the guise of reform. Western donors must demand full compliance with human rights norms, institute rigorous audits of PNEEI funds, and condition any aid on transparent abolition of all violence-linked payments and genuine democratic processes.