The Palestinian Authority has launched a new attack on the Palestinian prisoners and martyrs, as part of its ongoing “security coordination” with the Zionist regime, and in response to U.S. and European demands, at the expense of the Palestinian people, their frontline strugglers and their families. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network stands together with the Palestinian prisoners, their families and the collective national liberation movement in denouncing and rejecting this attack on the prisoners’ movement, which comes at the behest of the PA, the imperialist powers and the Zionist regime.
On 10 February 2025, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) issued a presidential decree cancelling the payments of financial allowances to the families of the Palestinian prisoners, martyrs and wounded that had been stipulated in the Prisoners’ Law. The decree further transferred the database, funds and responsibility for support for the families of the martyrs and prisoners from the Ministry of Social Development — and the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission — to the Tamkeen Foundation, the “Palestinian National Institution for Economic Empowerment,” an NGO officially outside the framework of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO.
The decree further specified that the families of prisoners, martyrs and wounded will receive support under the same standards of all families receiving social welfare funds as “needy families.”
In addition to creating a financial crisis for the families of those who have sacrificed the most for the liberation of Palestine, this action further aims to undermine the unique status of the prisoners and martyrs in Palestinian society, labeling them instead as victims of circumstance rather than veteran strugglers sacrificing for the liberation of their land and people.
Alongside wide-scale rejection of this decree by Palestinian political organizations and factions, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as well as many of the Fateh prisoners and their families, the president of the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission — the entity earlier set up to manage these payments — Qaddoura Fares, spoke out alongside other prisoners’ organizations in Palestine against the decree. In response, Abbas then ordered Fares to early retirement, dismissing him from his position for speaking in defense of the rights of the prisoners and their families. Samidoun further joins with the broad range of forces in the Palestinian liberation movement in condemning the attack on Qaddoura Fares and those who speak out in defense of the Palestinian prisoners.
Palestinian lawyer Isam Abdeen published a legal analysis of the order, noting that Abbas’ presidential term is long expired and thus his decrees carry no weight, that a presidential decree does not have the authority to cancel a law, and that the decree — and previous decrees reducing and limiting the rights of the prisoners and the martyrs — are unconstitutional, both within the PA’s Basic Law or constitution, and within the National Charter and statutes of the PLO. He wrote: “Rather, it is part of an integrated plan to empty Palestinian national rights of their content, tighten complete control over financial resources, and re-adjust the balance of power within the Authority, such that political loyalty becomes a basic condition for obtaining the most basic rights.”
The Tamkeen Foundation is run by Ahmad Majdalani, a Palestinian Authority official and an ally of Abbas who has become infamous for his anti-resistance, pro-normalization positions, from his 2016 participation in the Herzliya conference, a Zionist “state security and policy” conference, to his January 2024 statement — amid the Zionist genocide — that “Hamas is a terrorist organization in its current form, its current program, and its current political discourse.”
Majdalani’s foundation has been granted the authority to invasively review first the financial status of marginalized and impoverished Palestinians, to “assess” their eligibility for social welfare programs that amount to no more than 700 shekels monthly (approx $200). Now, Abbas is purporting to give this private NGO — run by the official making these same egregious anti-resistance statements — the authority to invasively “assess” the finances of the families of the martyrs, prisoners and wounded of the Palestinian cause, in order to dispense amounts of funds also no greater than 700 shekels monthly.
This is a cut of at least 50% from the financial allocations provided to prisoners’ families, that ranges up to a 95% cut depending on the number of years a prisoner has served behind bars, while it is a slap in the face to the sacrifices of the prisoners and martyrs.
Prior to this change, the laws in place required that:
“Based on the Palestinian Basic Law of 2003 and its various amendments, the prisoner in Israeli prisons receives a salary or a monthly sum of money due to his participation in the struggle against the occupation, provided that he is not an employee, and this salary is paid to him or his family and is stopped immediately upon his release from the occupation prisons.
Article Two of this law stipulates that every prisoner (arrested on the basis of struggle) is granted a monthly salary to be paid to him or his family, provided that he does not benefit from a monthly salary from any governmental or semi-governmental body or any official institution, and that governmental departments, official institutions or semi-governmental institutions may not cut the salaries of their employees if they are captured.
Article Four confirms that the person imposed into house arrest by the Israeli occupation authorities benefits from the provisions of this system, provided that his family submits the necessary supporting documents to the competent administration, and that a salary is paid to the prisoner from the date of his capture, according to Article Seven.
The articles of the law include adding allowances and increases to the salary, whether due to the presence of a wife or children, which is a salary whose value increases with the number of years until it reaches 30 years, at which point it remains a fixed amount.”
Zionist, European and U.S. propaganda has attacked this system repeatedly over the decades, stating that Palestinians join the resistance and undertake their liberation struggle in order to achieve these “payments.” This racist and absurd rhetoric implies that salaries similar to those of other workers present a financial inducement to engage in struggle — rather than the 77-plus years of Zionist occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, the ongoing theft of land and resources, the massacres of Palestinians, the attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque and holy sites throughout Palestine, the denial of the right to return, and the ongoing Nakba and genocide targeting Palestinian existence.
On the other hand, however, such a system — transferred from that of the revolutionary-era PLO — is that of a nation engaged in a liberation struggle, which works to support its prisoners, its martyrs and its wounded as honorable veterans of struggle, who are cherished by the society as the vanguard of resistance and liberation. The attack on this system is intended quite clearly as a new vector of attack on the resistance, by creating a new level of fear among Palestinian strugglers that their families will be left devastated and impoverished if they take action to defend their land and people.
This is fundamentally unsurprising, as the Palestinian Authority was not founded to nurture, but rather to control, suppress and police the Palestinian people and their Resistance, at the behest of the Zionist regime and the imperialist powers that fund it, since its inception in the Oslo process. However, in order for the PA to be granted any form of legitimacy, such provisions were viewed as necessary; without this support for the martyrs and prisoners, the PA would not have been able to usurp the position of the PLO nor claim a legitimate status of a “government” (without sovereignty or self-determination). In addition, such financial allocations have served as a mechanism of control, in which the threat of the withdrawal of funds and the power to consign a family or organization to poverty and marginalization is used to keep the Authority in place as a security force for the benefit of the occupation and the imperialist powers. Indeed, the PA has openly argued in the past that if it ceases these allocations, they will be taken up by resistance parties and organizations, putting the entire Oslo project at risk.
However, the aggressive, openly genocidal posture of the Zionist regime and the imperialist states has only escalated over the decades. The Zionist regime has been stealing the funds (taken from Palestinians’ taxes!) of the Authority in the amount paid to prisoners and martyrs, as an assortment of racist Zionist ministers and war criminals, from Benjamin Netanyahu to Itamar Ben-Gvir to Bezalel Smotrich, declare their open ambition to control all of Palestine through ethnic cleansing and genocide, with no need for the PA to serve as a secondary partner. The US passed the “Taylor Force Act” in 2018, which bars financial aid to the PA unless it stops paying allocations to the families of martyrs and prisoners; it should be noted here that the primary form of US aid to the PA is that of “security assistance” and, indeed, control — directing the role of the Palestinian Authority’s “security” forces to provide support to the occupation and collaborate with the Zionist regime to pursue and imprison resistance fighters.
Notably, the PA has escalated its assaults on Palestinian strugglers, particularly in Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas camps, in prelude to and alongside the ongoing Zionist assault on the camps that has already displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians. It seeks to market itself to the imperialist powers and reactionary Arab regimes as a replacement for the Resistance in Gaza at the expense of the prisoners, the martyrs, and their families.
An assortment of European imperialist powers have also joined the campaign to impoverish the families of Palestinian martyrs and prisoners, alongside Zionist lobby organizations around the world. Indeed, the German state — notorious for its embrace of Zionist genocide, serving as a major supplier of weaponry to the Zionist regime while banning Palestinian and Palestine solidarity organizations, arresting thousands of demonstrators, and banning the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — was one of the first to enthusiastically commend Abbas’ decree, noting: “The German Government welcomes President Abbas’ decision to abolish the so‑called Martyrs Fund…By abolishing the martyrs payment system, the PA is signalling that it is prepared to tackle reforms, even when they are difficult. Together with the European Union, we will support the PA as it continues along the path of reform.”
These actions should not be separated from other attacks by the imperialist powers on the Palestinian prisoners and the resistance, including the labeling of Palestinian, Lebanese and Yemeni resistance movements as “terrorist” organizations, subjecting them to sanctions and criminalization. This extends to the repression of grassroots organizations struggling for Palestinian prisoners, with Samidoun being labeled a “terrorist entity” in Canada, banned in Germany, and sanctioned in the United States, solely for its public advocacy, demonstrations, and political positions in support of the resistance with a focus on the prisoners.
It should be noted that this is not the first time the PA has conceded to such demands. In 2014, the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission was created as a “financially independent” body in order to distance the PA from these allocations. Since that time, every time a director of the Commission prioritizes the interests of the Palestinian prisoners above that of the PA leadership, they have been fired or dismissed. In 2018, Issa Qaraqe, then head of the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, was fired by Abbas; now, in 2025, Qaddoura Fares was ordered to early retirement, both in retaliation for refusing to abandon the Palestinian prisoners to marginalization.
Throughout this process, the Palestinian Authority continues to arrest, imprison and pursue resistance fighters and community activists, under the framework of “security coordination” with the Israeli occupation. There are dozens of Palestinians held in Palestinian Authority prisons for their support for resistance to the occupation, including, in multiple cases, providing financial support to the families of prisoners and martyrs.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network stands fully in solidarity with the families of the martyrs, prisoners and wounded. This decree is not only unlawful and dangerous to these families, it is intended to attack the social basis and undermine the status of the Palestinian liberation struggle at a fundamental level, altering the understanding of martyrs and prisoners as leaders and resistance fighters to one of unfortunate victims subjected to intrusive questioning and scrutiny at the hands of normalizers and enemies of resistance. Further, the dismissal of Qaddoura Fares underlines the consistent approach of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah in meeting dissent, particularly in defense of the liberation struggle, with repression and silencing. This is not a crime of the PA in Ramallah alone — the United States, the European imperialist powers, and the Zionist regime share full responsibility in this assault on the prisoners and their families, and it comes at the same time that the Resistance in Gaza is doing its utmost to liberate all Palestinian prisoners in Toufan al-Ahrar, the Flood of the Free.
We affirm that the Palestinian prisoners and martyrs are not alone and will not be left alone, and we urge all supporters of Palestine around the world to confront and challenge these policies of coercion and impoverishment and to elevate and escalate our support for the prisoners and the resistance struggling daily for the liberation of Palestine despite the highest levels of repression, violence and genocide.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
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