Former IDF prosecutor Maurice Hirsch reveals that 160 of 250 released terrorists became millionaires through Palestinian Authority salaries that reward terror.
In a shocking exposé that underscores the deep corruption within the Palestinian Authority’s terror-reward system, Lt. Col. (res.) Adv. Maurice Hirsch, former IDF military prosecutor for Judea and Samaria, revealed that 160 of the 250 terrorists released in Israel’s recent hostage deal emerged as millionaires — enriched by years of PA “pay-for-slay” stipends.
Speaking to Arutz Sheva – Israel National News, Hirsch, now a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, detailed how under Palestinian Authority law, terrorists are paid escalating monthly salaries based on the length of their imprisonment — with the highest earners collecting NIS 8,000 per month, equivalent to a senior civil servant’s income.
“This isn’t a custom — it’s law,” Hirsch emphasized. “Mahmoud Abbas personally advanced it. The PA pays every single terrorist a monthly salary that grows with the years spent in prison. Many of those who entered prison in the early 2000s left as millionaires.”
According to Hirsch, Israel once permitted the PA to transfer larger canteen allowances to security prisoners, while salaries quietly accumulated in bank accounts via Red Cross intermediaries, who supplied account details to Ramallah.
When the terrorists were freed as part of the hostage agreement, they discovered millions waiting for them, a grotesque windfall for individuals convicted of murdering Israelis.
Hirsch noted that in 2006 and again in 2011, the PA drastically raised the payment scale, resulting in monthly outlays of NIS 500–600 million — not including stipends to families of “martyrs.”
“From the PA’s perspective,” Hirsch explained, “a terrorist is simply an employee. The longer the ‘employment,’ the higher the salary. Fatah, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad — it doesn’t matter. Every murderer of Jews is on their payroll.”
The results are staggering: 160 released terrorists are now millionaires, with the most veteran killers each receiving over one million shekels in accumulated “salary.” Upon release, they are also granted tens of thousands of dollars in bonuses and guaranteed positions in the PA’s bloated civil service — which now boasts more generals than the U.S. Army, many of them former terrorists elevated to rank through this perverse system.
Hirsch condemned Israel’s role in enabling this mechanism, tracing its origins to the Paris Protocol of the Oslo Accords, which mandated the transfer of Israeli-collected tax revenues to the PA.
“We thought we were buying peace,” Hirsch said. “Instead, that money was used to finance the murder of Jews. For years, Israel looked away — from school incitement, from the unchanged PLO Charter, from the salaries for killers. If we had stopped this 14 years ago, we might have had peace instead of collapse.”
Hirsch’s warning today is crystal clear:
“If we do not insist on every single detail of the current agreement, we’ll soon be facing another war. Just as the PA rewarded terrorists, Hamas will regroup and return — unless Israel enforces every clause: every hostage back, every gun surrendered.”
His revelations shine a harsh light on the moral rot of the PA, which continues to glorify murderers as heroes, and serve as a reminder that appeasement without accountability only fuels future terror.
