Palestinian Authority employed Hamas's Oct. 7 planners, study finds

A study by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA) claims the Palestinian Authority's (P.A.) "pay-for-slay" program "materially facilitated" the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Authored by IDF Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, the report, titled “Did the PA’s ‘Pay-for-Slay’ Policy Facilitate the October 7 Massacre?”, asserts that the P.A. employed terrorists, including key planners like Yahya Sinwar, who were released in the 2011 Shalit deal. Hirsch states, “the P.A./PLO’s responsibility for the Oct. 7 massacre also rests on the fact that they employed terrorists, simply for being terrorists, and those terrorists, while in the employ of the P.A., carried out the massacre.” The study suggests that P.A. payments, which are legally mandated for released security prisoners, allowed these individuals to dedicate themselves to planning the attack rather than seeking other employment. The Israeli Foreign Ministry also highlighted this, posting that the P.A.’s policy “helped bankroll Hamas’s future leadership.”