What happened
The Palestinian Martyrs and Prisoners Affairs Authority pays a base monthly stipend to all Palestinians in Israeli prisons regardless of the offence, with amounts that increase in bands tied to sentence length — a prisoner serving 5 years receives more than one serving 1, and a prisoner serving a life sentence for killing Israelis receives more than either. In 2019, PA officials disclosed the payments consumed roughly $174 million annually, a substantial share of the PA's total budget and, at the time, a larger line item than its entire health ministry allocation, which is part of why critics argue the structure functions as a de facto incentive rather than a neutral welfare programme, since the amount paid correlates directly with the severity of the underlying offence rather than genuine need.
The Taylor Force Act, named for an American army veteran killed in a 2016 Tel Aviv stabbing attack, required the US to cut an amount of aid to the PA equivalent to what the PA spent on these payments each year, and was passed with bipartisan support in Congress specifically over this issue — a rare instance of US legislation naming a specific foreign government payment programme as a condition for aid. The PA's counter-argument has real substance too: prisoners' families lose their primary breadwinner regardless of the offence, and many other governments, including Israel's own, provide some form of ongoing support to the families of people convicted or killed in relation to national conflicts. What distinguishes the Palestinian programme in critics' eyes is specifically the sentence-length scaling, which ties higher payments to more severe attacks on civilians rather than applying a flat welfare rate — a structural design choice the PA has not changed despite the sustained international pressure and aid losses it has caused.