Palestinian public sector workers can expect to receive 50% of their wages on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority’s finance ministry announced on Tuesday night, months after critical service workers went on strike after receiving only a fraction of their pay.
The PA promised that workers would receive a minimum payment of NIS 2,000, the same minimum payment that led to hospital workers striking in April, and promised that the owed funds “will be disbursed when financial resources allow.”
The Palestinian Authority began paying workers 80% of their salaries in 2022 after Israel started withholding tax revenues.
The move followed the implementation of a 2018 law that allowed Jerusalem to deduct funds equivalent to the payments the PA provides to terrorists and their families under its so-called “pay-for-slay” program.
Last year, Palestinian public sector employees did not receive their wages for the month of May until July, and in September 2025, the PA confirmed that workers would only be guaranteed 50% of their wages.
Though the US State Department confirmed in April, and PA President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed in May, that payments to terrorists and their families have continued despite international condemnation, activists have largely pointed the blame at Israel for the PA’s financial crisis.
Weaken the PA, trigger unrest across the West Bank
Palestinian writer Ihab Hassan complained on social media that “Israel’s policy is to push the Palestinian Authority toward collapse by withholding Palestinian funds and creating an unsustainable financial crisis…"
“The objective is clear: weaken the PA, trigger unrest across the West Bank, and then use the resulting instability as a pretext for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land.”
An editorial by the Palestine Now Agency claimed that the PA is losing between one and 1.5 billion shekels a month, with the territory reaching only 10% of its normal revenues.