PA Admission: Palestinian Authority Confesses to Prioritizing Terror Payments Over Children’s Education
In a widely reported development that has reverberated through education and human rights communities, a senior Palestinian Authority official publicly acknowledged that the PA places higher priority on providing financial rewards to convicted attackers and families of deceased militants than on fully funding the salaries of its educators. This admission crystallizes a fiscal and moral trade-off that has profound consequences for schooling across Palestinian-administered areas.
The disclosure, made on PA television by an education sector leader, described the phenomenon in practical terms: teachers reduce their classroom hours because they are not receiving full pay. The official attributed the funding shortfalls to an Israeli withholding of tax transfers — a result of a policy designed to counter the PA’s terror-reward program commonly labeled Pay-for-Slay. Yet observers and analysts point out that the PA’s own choices to sustain monthly payouts, estimated at around 30 million USD per month, create a self-inflicted budget squeeze that directly undermines education provision.
To humanize the issue, consider the fictional example of Laila, a primary-school teacher in a town near Ramallah. She arrives to a classroom with bright posters and a desire to teach, but in 2025 she is required by her local teachers’ union to limit instruction to three or four days a week because her salary has been cut to roughly 70% at the beginning of the school year. Her pupils miss structured lessons in mathematics and reading, and their formative years shift toward irregular tutoring or no instruction at all.
Laila’s story mirrors real reports gathered by monitoring organizations and media. The financial calculus behind these developments is often opaque to parents and students, but the effects are unmistakable: less time in class, interrupted pedagogical continuity, and growing educational deficits for children already living under socioeconomic stress.
Key details from the admission and its implications
Breaking down the admission clarifies the sequence of cause and effect that educational stakeholders must address.
- PA admission: Senior PA education official acknowledged teachers refrain from full-time work because of unpaid salaries.
- Mechanism: Israel deducts tax transfers in response to PA terror payments (Anti Pay-for-Slay-related deductions).
- Self-inflicted crisis: Analysts note that if the PA stopped terror payments, the tax transfers would not be withheld and teachers could be paid in full.
- Scale: Terror payments estimated at 30 million USD per month, a drain on public finances that could otherwise fund schools.
International watchdogs and NGOs, including Palestinian Media Watch and contributors reporting on the region, have long tracked the tension between allocations to terror rewards and social services funding. Those findings now intersect with the PA’s own account, raising urgent policy questions about budget priorities and the consequences for children.
From a classroom perspective, the immediate result is a reduction in teaching hours, with teachers like Laila forced to choose between inconsistent pay and reduced instructional commitment. From a governance perspective, the admission offers activists and donors a clearer target for advocacy: press for budget reallocation to restore teacher salaries and learning time.
Finally, the disclosure challenges international supporters to reconcile their objectives. Organizations such as UNICEF, Save the Children, and the United Nations emphasize that every child has a right to education; the PA admission highlights how political decisions at the leadership level can obstruct those rights. This insight points toward an urgent need to align financial priorities with educational obligations.
Key insight: The PA’s public acknowledgment converts a previously debated allegation into an operational factor that directly explains why many Palestinian children receive only partial schooling.
Classroom Consequences: How Reduced Pay and Part-Time Teaching Affect Palestinian Students
Reduced salaries and shortened teacher hours ripple through schooling in measurable ways. When teachers work three or four days instead of a full five-day week, curriculum coverage, remedial instruction, and extracurricular learning all suffer. The result is widening learning gaps that particularly affect the most vulnerable children.
Take the example of a Grade 4 class in an urban school that now receives 60% of scheduled instructional time. Fundamental skills such as reading comprehension and basic numeracy require practice and repetition. Interruptions mean teachers must prioritize essential content, leaving little room for enrichment or identifying learning difficulties early enough to intervene effectively.
International organizations have documented similar disruptions across conflict-affected settings. Agencies like UNICEF and Save the Children emphasize that consistent schooling is a protective factor; when access becomes sporadic, children face increased risk of dropout, child labor, and psychosocial stress. Local educators report that even when teachers attempt to offer catch-up sessions, logistical constraints and parental economic pressures limit attendance.
Curricular and psychosocial effects
Missing school days compounds into cumulative learning loss. Students who miss foundational instruction in early grades are more likely to fall behind in later years. In addition to academic setbacks, schools serve as environments for socialization and emotional support; reduced contact with teachers weakens that safety net.
- Academic loss: Gaps in math and literacy due to fewer contact hours.
- Social effects: Reduced teacher-student interaction undermines mentoring and behavior guidance.
- Vulnerable students: Those with disabilities or learning difficulties lose essential tailored support.
- Attendance decline: Sporadic schedules increase the likelihood of chronic absenteeism.
Beyond immediate learning losses, the credibility of public education erodes. Families witnessing unstable schedules begin to invest in informal tutoring or withdraw children from school altogether. This creates a parallel market for private instruction that widens inequality; wealthier parents shield children from disruption while poorer households absorb the long-term costs of educational deprivation.
International actors tracking these trends include Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, both of which monitor how political financing choices affect socioeconomic rights. They stress the obligation of governments to protect children’s right to education regardless of other policy stances. Meanwhile, donor agencies like USAID and the World Bank face dilemmas: how to channel funds so they reach classrooms without enabling practices that reward violence.
At the local level, education ministries can adopt mitigation measures even amid fiscal constraints. Examples include prioritizing core learning outcomes, organizing community volunteers for remedial sessions, and partnering with NGOs to keep schools operational. In one hypothetical case study, Laila organizes weekend reading circles leveraging a small grant from a civil society group; despite budgetary shortfalls, these circles help mitigate reading declines for younger children.
However, such stopgap measures cannot replace stable teacher employment and full instructional time. For sustainable improvement, fiscal policy must prioritize teachers’ pay and schools’ operational budgets. The interplay between governance choices and classroom realities makes clear that protecting educational continuity requires decisive budgetary and political action.
Key insight: When teachers work reduced hours due to unpaid wages, learning loss accelerates and social protections erode, creating long-term disadvantages for a generation of children.
International Response and Accountability: European Union, United Nations, and NGO Pressure
The PA’s funding choices have prompted reactions across the international community. Legislatures, multilateral institutions, and non-governmental organizations are grappling with how to respond to reports that public funds support payments to prisoners and martyrs while teachers and schools go underfunded.
In 2025 the European Union and several parliaments debated measures to condition financial transfers on educational reforms and cessation of payments perceived as incentivizing violence. The European Parliament has in past sessions urged funding freezes and stricter oversight when curricula or fiscal practices contravene EU aid conditions. Complementary to this, the United Nations and agencies such as UNICEF regularly highlight the imperative to protect children’s rights, pressing for donor coordination to ensure funds reach schools.
Human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have called for greater transparency and accountability in how public monies are allocated. They emphasize that international assistance must not be redirected to sustain harmful practices and that donors have a duty to safeguard aid effectiveness while upholding human rights norms.
- European Union: Legislative pressure and conditionality on aid linked to curriculum reform and fiscal transparency.
- United Nations and UNICEF: Advocacy for child protection and education continuity.
- NGOs: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Save the Children push for rights-based aid and monitoring.
- Transparency concerns: Transparency International highlights the need for clear budget lines and independent audits.
Donor institutions like the World Bank and bilateral partners such as USAID face complex choices. They must balance the urgent needs of students and teachers with legitimate concerns about the diversion of domestic funds to programs that may contravene donor values. Some donors prefer direct support for schools and community-based programs to ensure funds have immediate educational impact. Others advocate for structural reforms and conditional disbursements linked to demonstrable changes in governance practices.
At the same time, civil society initiatives in the region and international coalitions have mobilized to fill gaps. Save the Children and Oxfam have implemented community learning centers and psychosocial support programs in nearby contexts, illustrating how targeted programming can sustain educational access in emergencies. Yet such programming is not a long-term substitute for stable, adequately paid teachers and properly resourced public schools.
Diplomatic signals also matter. High-level meetings, such as President Mahmoud Abbas’s regional engagements, and bilateral dialogues with neighboring states influence donor stances and funding channels. For instance, meetings between Palestinian leaders and external partners can determine whether reforms receive prioritization or are deferred.
Key insight: International actors can mitigate short-term educational shortfalls with direct programs, but sustainable solutions require conditionality, transparency, and political will to reallocate domestic funds toward schools.
Fiscal Realities and Alternatives: Understanding the Budgetary Mechanics Behind ‘Pay-for-Slay’
At the center of this crisis is a budgetary decision: continue monthly payments to families of prisoners and deceased attackers, or reallocate those resources to social services like education. The PA’s choice reflects political priorities, but it also triggers external fiscal consequences because Israel reduces tax transfers as a countermeasure. Understanding the mechanics clarifies why financial choices compound quickly into service gaps.
The Israeli withholding policy — often framed legally under mechanisms targeting funds that finance terrorism — reduces the monthly tax revenues the PA would otherwise receive. Critics argue that if the PA ceased the payments that prompt the withholdings, the tax transfers would resume, restoring liquidity to the education budget. Supporters of PA policy counter that the payments are a social commitment to families affected by conflict, and any reallocation would require alternative social safety nets.
Financial modeling shows the potential scope of impact. If the PA pays approximately 30 million USD per month to beneficiaries of the reward program, eliminating or restructuring those payments could free substantial fiscal space. Redirecting even a portion could restore teacher salaries to full pay, finance school maintenance, and expand remedial programs. The World Bank and fiscal advisers often recommend reallocations coupled with transparency measures to ensure funds reach priority sectors.
- Direct cost: Estimated 30 million USD/month allocated to terror-related payments.
- Countermeasure effect: Israeli tax deductions reduce PA liquidity, further squeezing public services.
- Potential reallocation: Funds redirected to education could cover full teacher salaries and school operating costs.
- Conditional financing: Donors can offer performance-based funds to support reforms and rebuild trust.
There are several practical alternatives to blunt the immediate crisis while longer-term reforms are pursued. First, the PA could commission an independent audit of social payments to verify need-based allocations, a step that would address transparency concerns raised by groups like Transparency International. Second, international partners could design hybrid financing: conditional budget support aimed at teachers’ salaries, combined with programmatic grants for curriculum revision and school infrastructure.
Policy experts also propose social safety net reforms that differentiate between legitimate welfare needs and politically motivated payouts. For instance, a needs-based means test administered transparently could preserve funds for genuinely vulnerable households while freeing resources for public services. Technical assistance from institutions like the World Bank and targeted grants from USAID could help design and implement such systems.
Finally, local solutions matter. Community-based accountability measures, school management committees, and municipal budgeting reforms can ensure more direct oversight of how funds are spent at the school level. In Laila’s town, a pilot municipal education board worked with a donor to create a protective fund that guaranteed full teacher pay for a semester, showing how combined local-international efforts can unlock short-term stability.
Key insight: The fiscal trade-offs are resolvable if political choices change and donors pair conditional financing with transparency and capacity-building initiatives.
Pathways for Educational Reform: Curriculum, Teacher Support, and Donor Strategies
Addressing the educational crisis requires both immediate mitigation and long-term systemic reform. Policies must restore teacher pay and instructional time while simultaneously tackling curricular content, governance, and funding transparency. These efforts should be coordinated across national authorities, donors, and civil society.
Curriculum reform is central. Independent monitoring groups have raised concerns about content that glorifies violence or fosters hatred, which has led the European Union and other donors to demand revision as a condition of some funding. A credible reform process emphasizes evidence-based curricula that build critical thinking, conflict resolution, and civic competencies. Organizations like Save the Children, UNICEF, and educational NGOs can support teacher training to implement new pedagogies focused on inclusion.
Strengthening teachers’ professional status is equally important. Restoring full salaries, offering professional development, and recognizing merit through transparent contracting can motivate educators and rebuild public confidence. International partners can assist by funding in-service training and by helping to establish merit-based scales that are insulated from politicized payroll decisions.
- Curriculum revision: Emphasize peace education, critical thinking, and alignment with international norms.
- Teacher support: Fund salaries, training, and psychosocial resources for educators.
- Donor strategies: Condition aid on transparency and measurable educational outcomes.
- Accountability: Independent audits and civil-society monitoring to ensure funds reach schools.
Donors such as USAID, the World Bank, and foundations can design programs that are both principled and pragmatic: channeling funds directly to schools, supporting community-based monitoring, and tying portions of assistance to verifiable curricular changes. Meanwhile, watchdogs like Transparency International can build mechanisms to track allocations and detect diversion.
Case study: In a modeled pilot, a consortium of donors worked with a municipal education board and local NGOs to create a teacher-protection fund that guaranteed timely salaries for one academic year. Complementary workshops trained teachers in child-centered pedagogy. The program included independent evaluation by an external body and resulted in improved attendance and learning metrics within a year.
Beyond technical reforms, political leadership is critical. Statements by top officials that prioritize education and commit to transparent budgeting resonate with the international community and can unlock conditional funding. Civil society advocacy and international pressure from groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International help maintain focus on children’s rights while organizations like Oxfam and Save the Children deliver on-the-ground programs.
In sum, a credible path forward blends immediate protection for teachers and students with structural reforms to ensure sustainability. Strategies must be multidimensional, combining fiscal reallocation, curriculum modernization, capacity building, and robust oversight by both national and international actors.
Key insight: Sustainable educational recovery in Palestinian areas depends on political commitment to prioritize children, paired with donor-supported reforms that guarantee transparency and measurable learning gains.