Abbas fires top PA official who opposed cut to payments to families of jailed Palestinians

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in November 2024

Jack Khoury reports in Haaretz on 19 February 2025:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has ousted the head of his Commission on Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs because he opposed a decree limiting the payments received by the families of Palestinians jailed in Israel.

Under the presidential decree that Abbas issued last week, the criteria for payments to Palestinians jailed in Israel for terrorism offenses will change. In the past, the size of the allowances paid prisoners’ families was based on how long their sentence was, with higher payments going to those serving longer terms. Now, the payments will be based on the families’ socioeconomic situation.

But Qaddura Fares, the head of the commission and a longtime official from Abbas’ Fatah party, blasted the decree.

“It’s not logical for the rights of prisoners and martyrs to be subject to new administrative or financial criteria that ignore the national aspect of this issue,” he said at a press conference he called last week. He added that the decree could harm large swaths of Palestinian society and urged Abbas to revisit the decision in consultation with the Palestinians’ national institutions.  Other Fatah members have voiced similar criticism of the new decree.

Fares is close to senior Fatah member Marwan Barghouti, who is himself serving multiple life sentences in Israel for murder. When Abbas formed a new government in August 2023, he appointed Fares to head the Commission on Detainees as part of a deal with Barghouti to keep the latter from opposing the new government.

Fares learned about the decision to oust him only from the media while attending a rally in support of the prisoners in Ramallah. He is now expected to retire from public office. His likely replacement is Raed Abu al-Hummus, himself a former Israeli prisoner who has held other jobs in the commission and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.

Palestinian Authority officials rejected the claim that Abbas’ decree stemmed from international pressure, primarily American. They said it was an internal decision made as part of a broader reform of government institutions.

One senior PA official who was involved in the issue said the order won’t end payments to the prisoners and their families, but will end the discrimination under which some needy families – those with a relative jailed in Israel – get more than other needy families. He added that the war in the Gaza Strip and its impact, along with the economic pressure the PA is under, forced this reorganization.  The Commission on Detainees said the impact of the decree isn’t yet clear, but noted that the payment of salaries to prisoners and allowances to their families has been enshrined in the PA’s Basic Law for decades.

Hamas attacked the PA and Abbas over the decision, terming it an “anti-national act.”

“We must recognize the sacrifices of the prisoners, the wounded and the martyrs’ families and support their families instead of abandoning them,” Hamas said. “Turning the families of prisoners and martyrs, who have given what is dearest of all to them, into welfare cases is an embarrassment.”

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