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As Qatar Emir Visits Canada, Just What is Doha Up To?
By HENRY SREBRNIK (Sept. 19/24) Qatar…home of Hamas leaders, Al-Jazeera, host of soccer’s 2022 World Cup, and wealth beyond measure. And everyone’s favourite centre for “negotiations” to end the war Hamas unleashed on Israel a year ago. It’s become everyone’s go-to country, a veritable “light unto the nations.”
However, as the 1946 song “Put the Blame on Mame” has it, in a different context, of course, “That’s the story that went around, but here’s the real lowdown” … about this duplicitous Persian Gulf emirate.
Even before the Gaza war began, there was an upswing of commentary celebrating a shift in the policies and behavior of Qatar: away from promoting and subsidizing radical Islamist groups, and towards “deconfliction” and moderation.
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the country’s emir, has been basking in the glow of international approval, depicting the country as a global influencer and peacemaker. The Qataris want to make themselves indispensable.
It plays into Doha’s ongoing attempts to create an illusion of rebranding as a moderating actor in the Middle East and beyond, pushed by various propagandists in the West on Qatar’s payroll, including more than a few American university centres and departments awash in Qatari money.
The emir and other officials spent two days in Canada Sept. 17-19, meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and cabinet ministers. The Gaza war was on the agenda, of course. Indeed, Jewish-Canadian leaders urged Trudeau to criticize him over his patronage of Hamas. But being able to tap into Qatar’s wealth via business and trade was more likely on Trudeau’s mind.
Qatar has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, at $110,000 a year. And while its total population is some 2.7 million, most of these are guest workers, including European lawyers and consultants at the top of the scale, and at the bottom South Asian labourers. Only some 313,000 are native Qataris, the ones who benefit from the riches it derives from the sale of oil and gas.
The Peninsula, an English language daily newspaper published in Doha, ran an article on the occasion of the emir’s visit by noting the expanding trade and investment cooperation between Canada and Qatar, especially with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in June between the Qatar Financial Center and the Canada Arab Business Council, a non-profit organization that aims to enhance trade and investment relations between Canada and the Arab world.
The MoU “aims to establish an integrated framework for cooperation and coordination in specific sectors through joint initiatives and the exchange of information and expertise, with a focus on stimulating growth and promoting innovation in areas such as financial services and professional business services.” Ahmed Hussen, Minister of International Development participated in a signing ceremony with Lolwah bint Rashid Al-Khater, Qatar’s Minister of State for International Cooperation.
More than 9,000 Canadian expatriates live in Qatar, working in Canadian and Qatari companies and institutions. From January to July, Canada exported goods valued at $103.45 million to Qatar, while Qatar’s exports to Canada amounted to $90.27 million.
There is also a partnership in academic programs, as the University of Calgary has been in Doha since 2006, offering a Bachelor of Nursing program, along with the College of the North Atlantic, which transformed into the University of Doha for Science and Technology. Furthermore, there are several Doha-based schools that offer Canadian curricula.
In their meeting, Sheikh Tamim expressed his aspiration to work with Trudeau to advance their bilateral cooperation across multiple sectors in order to “contribute to enhancing regional and global peace and stability.” Bilateral relations between the two countries were discussed, especially in the fields of investment, economy and international cooperation, “in addition to developments and situations in the Gaza Strip and the occupied Palestinian territories.”
Qatar has been very successful in its efforts to shape public opinion in Canada, as well as in the far more important United States. The amount of money that Qatar has poured into universities, schools, educational organizations, think tanks, and media across America, and the number of initiatives that Qatar uses to influence American opinion, is overwhelming.
According to a 2022 study from the National Association of Scholars, Qatar is the largest foreign donor to American universities. It found that between 2001 and 2021, the petrostate donated a whopping $4.7 billion to U.S. colleges. The largest recipients are some of America’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning. They include Carnegie Mellon University, Ivy League Cornell University, Georgetown University in Washington, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Texas A & M. These schools have partnered with the regime to build campuses in Doha’s “education city,” a special district of the capital that hosts satellite colleges for American universities. (Texas A&M decided earlier this year to shutter its branch campus in Qatar.)
Georgetown University in Qatar, for instance, was hosting the “Reimagining Palestine” conference Sept. 20-22. The event engages scholars, experts, and the public “in timely and relevant dialogues on globally significant issues,” according to a description of the gathering. One of the speakers, Wadah Khanfar, “was active in the Hamas movement and was one of its most prominent leaders in the movement’s office in Sudan,” the Raya Media Network, a Palestinian outlet, tells us. In the months following Oct. 7, the campus has hosted a variety of seemingly anti-Israel events.
Since 2008, Qatar has donated nearly $602 million to Northwestern University, whose journalism school is ranked as one of the best in the world, to establish a school of journalism in Qatar. The Northwestern University campus in Qatar and Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera in 2013 signed a Memorandum of Understanding to “further facilitate collaboration and knowledge transfer between two of Qatar’s foremost media organizations.” Are Northwestern’s interests really aligned with Qatar?
Qatari state-financed entities also often fund individual scholars or programs in the United States without official disclosure or being directly traceable to a government source, thus avoiding public scrutiny. For example, Ivy League Yale University disclosed only $284,668 in funding from Qatar between 2010 and 2022. Researchers at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) in a report released in June, though, found that this amount reflected only a small fraction of the money and services the university and its scholars had in fact received over that period. The most common channel for hard-to-track Qatari support for Yale came from individual research grants originating from the Qatar National Research Fund, and their report found 11 Yale-linked QNRF grants which came to at least $15,925,711.
Recent research from the Network Contagion Research Institute indicated that at least 200 American universities illegally withheld information about approximately $13 billion in Qatari contributions. Also, according to the report, from 2015 to 2020 institutions that accepted money from Middle Eastern donors had on average, 300 percent more antisemitic incidents than those institutions that did not.
Overall, the report found that “a massive influx of foreign, concealed donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it from authoritarian regimes with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry and free expression.”
Much of Doha’s engagement with the world is run out of the Qatar Meeting, Incentive, Conference and Exhibition (MICE) Development Institute (QMDI), which promotes Qatar as a good place for business. The annual Doha Forum gathers major policymakers from around the world.
Qatar’s influence-buying strategies are a textbook example of how to transform cash into “soft” power. The relationship between one of Washington, D.C.’s top think tanks and Qatar, for example, began in 2002, when the emirate underwrote a Doha conference featuring then Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, at the time the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. (Hamad oversaw Qatar’s $230 billion sovereign wealth fund until 2013.) In 2007, Brookings followed up by opening a centre on Doha. It didn’t end well. In 2021 the institute ended its relationship with Qatar amidst an ongoing FBI investigation.
Still, Washington treads carefully when it comes to criticizing Qatar. It’s not just about money. After all, the Al-Udaid Air Base is home to the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), and the country is just across the Persian Gulf from Iran. In fact, Washington’s relationship with Qatar is so close that in 2022 the White House officially designated the emirate a “major non-NATO ally.” The Qataris, realizing that their very existence would be threatened were the U.S. to relocate its CENTCOM operations to the UAE or Saudi Arabia, in January hastened to nail down the agreement for another decade.
Yoni Ben-Menachem, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told the Jewish News Service (JNS) that the Gulf country is more dangerous than Hamas or Hezbollah since it is extraordinarily wealthy and thus in a position to influence U.S. administrations.
Qatar has for many years been involved in financing the campaigns of the Democratic Party, he claimed, “especially Hillary Clinton’s campaign” in 2016. He added that former U.S. President Bill Clinton is known to have flown to Qatar to bring back suitcases full of cash.
According to Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), Qatar has portrayed itself as “indispensable to U.S. interests in the Middle East, including negotiations with the Taliban, reconstruction aid for past Gaza conflicts, and building the massive Al-Udeid base for U.S. forces.”
Yet although it hosts the Pentagon’s regional command, Qatar has long supported terrorism. For decades, it has opened its doors to Islamist terrorists, Taliban warlords and African insurgents. Doha housed the Taliban’s political office before that group returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021.
Beginning in 2012, the Israeli government allowed Qatar to deliver cash to Gaza. Over the next nine years, Qatar provided $1.5 billion. Prior to the outbreak of the present conflict, Doha subsidized Hamas to the tune of $360 million to $480 million a year. With one third of that money, Qatar bought Egyptian fuel that Cairo then shipped into Gaza, where Hamas sold it and pocketed its revenue. Another third went to impoverished Gazan families, while the last third paid the salaries of the Hamas bureaucracy.
The leaders of Hamas, including Khaled Mashaal and the late Ismail Haniyeh, who was chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau until assassinated by Israel in July, have been regular guests in Doha, living in luxury. (The emir sat in the front row with mourners during Haniyeh’s funeral in Doha.) Qatar has defended Hamas’s presence in the country.
“This was started to be used as a way of communicating and bringing peace and calm into the region, not to instigate any war,” Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last October. “And this is the purpose of that office.” Blinken seemed to buy this. At a press conference in Doha in February, he asserted that “we’re very fortunate to have Qatar as a partner.”
As far back as 2007, when Hamas seized control of Gaza, Qatar recognized that “adopting” the group would be a worthwhile opportunity: connections with Hamas in Gaza grants Qatar influence and status in the Middle East and beyond. In addition, they bolster the popular Arab perception of Doha as working for the Palestinian cause. In 2012, the emir became the first head of state to visit Gaza, pledging $400 million to Hamas. At the same time, the Qataris became the exclusive mediators between Israel and Hamas.
The U.S. has accused the Qataris of harboring members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). But at the same time the Qataris are an important intermediary between America and Iran. Doha has enjoyed good relations with the Biden administration, which it helped in the American hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago.
While organized as a private company, the Al-Jazeera television network is the voice of Qatar’s regime. Founded in 1996 and financed by the then-emir of Qatar, it has described terrorist attacks that killed Israeli non-combatants as martyrdom operations and even posted articles describing Israel as “the Zionist entity.” For years, Al-Jazeera aired all of Osama bin Laden’s speeches. The late Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf Al-Qaradawi was based in Doha and for years hosted a prime-time program on the network. The war on Israel was declared on Al-Jazeera by Hamas military commander Muhammad Deif last October 7. Its operations in Israel were finally terminated by Jerusalem in May.
Qatar has been using the immense wealth it has accumulated to turn Al-Jazeera into an international media conglomerate, spreading Muslim Brotherhood propaganda, Hamas’ original sponsor, on a global scale. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by the cleric Hassan al-Banna as a reaction to his perception that the Muslim world had become week in relation to the West. The royal family of Qatar has since been using the Muslim Brotherhood to minimize political opposition against them. In exchange for allowing the Brotherhood to use the country as a base for its international operations, the Brotherhood makes sure that there is no political threat based on organized religion against the Qatari monarchy.
A major shock to Qatar’s economy occurred when some Gulf Cooperation Council members — Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — imposed an embargo on Qatar from 2017 to 2021. The reason for the embargo was Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood.
Qatar owns other news media that are equally awful. The London-based daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi in June published an article entitled “War Criminal Blinken Wages Diplomatic Campaign to Eliminate Palestinian Resistance and Buy Time for Israeli War in Gaza.”
Qatar is not a neutral agent, despite its attempts to portray itself as such. Time and again, it has supported the region’s most radical nations and paramilitaries, all to the detriment of American and Western interests. Its malign influence activities the United States reflect the broader issue of foreign manipulation in America’s political landscape.
“Qatar has been playing a dual role since the beginning of the Gaza war. On the one hand, it is a well-known supporter of Hamas, and even finances it with a lot of money, and on the other hand, it is trying to help in the deal for the release of the Israeli hostages,” remarked Dr. Udi Levy, a former senior official of Israel’s Mossad spy agency in April. But the U.S. relationship with Qatar will continue as long as the American government finds it useful in the on-again off-again negotiations to have Hamas release the remaining Israeli hostages.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
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Why J Street’s New Policy Initiative Is Seriously Misguided
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, Oct. 1, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
We live in a time when synagogues and Jewish-sponsored events are under violent attack from London to Bondi Beach, to Temple Israel in Michigan.
At such a moment, efforts by J Street to see US military aid to Israel stopped are not just misguided; they are profoundly irresponsible.
On April 13, J Street posted a statement on its website titled, “Reassessing the US-Israel Security Relationship.”
J Street said, “The United States should phase out direct financial support for arms sales to Israel and treat Israel as it does other wealthy US allies.”
J Street did say (at the end of the statement) that, “The United States should continue to sell short-range air and ballistic missile defense (BMD) capabilities to Israel.”
But is that part just a way for them to play both sides if they need to? Otherwise, why make this charge (at the beginning of the statement): “Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act prohibits security assistance to any country whose government engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
Also alarming is how J Street deliberately misrepresents the positions of people who want to end direct military aid to Israel: “A responsible and relatively rapid phase-out of all financial assistance, including for ballistic missile defense, is now supported by figures from across the political spectrum, such as Prime Minister Netanyahu, Senator Lindsey Graham …”
However, neither Netanyahu or Graham have made statements that fit J Street’s flawed approach and dishonest narrative.
The truth is that when interviewed by The Economist, Netanyahu stated, “I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years.” How can J Street say that “the next 10 years” is the same as “relatively rapid”?
And on January 9 on X , Graham tweeted the following: “The aid we have provided to Israel has been a great investment keeping the IDF strong, sharing technology, and making their military more capable – to the benefit of the United States.” Graham went further saying, “we need not wait ten years,” but nowhere did Graham say he was for ending all military assistance while Israel is at war.
You’ll often hear from J Street, and other critics of Israel, that American aid is a “blank check.” It isn’t. US military assistance to Israel is governed by agreements and legal frameworks that require much of that funding to be spent on American-made defense systems.
In practice, that means a significant share of the aid flows back into the US economy — supporting domestic manufacturing, defense jobs, and technological development. You can debate the policy. But calling it a blank check is simply inaccurate — and yet the phrase persists because it fits a far too often preferred anti-Israel narrative. And it’s very hard to believe that J Street does not understand this reality, even as it advances that framing.
There is a huge difference in the strategic relationship that America has with Israel than any of its other allies. Israel offers America military support, intelligence, and operational experience that is unparalleled. Yet J Street’s advocacy to curtail or condition aid ignores the depth and mutual benefit of that partnership, reducing a complex alliance to a one-sided transaction.
The Iron Dome and David’s Sling — key components of Israel’s multi-layered missile defense system — are battle-proven in real-world conditions. The United States has directly benefited from Israeli innovation in missile defense, counterterrorism, and battlefield medicine. No US ally in any corner of the world has contributed to America’s defense in such an immediate and practical way. And that should mean we debate aid to Israel differently than aid to allies who don’t give us those tangible benefits.
Efforts by J Street to target funding for these systems are not abstract policy debates; they would weaken tools that save civilian lives and inform US defense capabilities.
President Truman recognized the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, just minutes after Israel declared independence. Of course, this had something to do with the Holocaust. What’s more, the very fact that Israel is encircled by Iranian terrorist proxies that seek to destroy it, that so many nations refuse to even recognize its right to exist, and that Iran is struggling to preserve its nuclear program are all reasons that dictate that there is something inherently different about its situation compared to its neighbors. And that should be taken into account when debating and deciding on US policy.
This is not about silencing debate. It is about grounding that debate in facts, history, and the real-world consequences of policy choices. At a time of rising threats, weakening a proven alliance and undermining defensive systems like Iron Dome does not advance peace or security — it puts both at risk.
Positions like these help explain J Street’s limited support within the American Jewish community — and why its views must be scrutinized and challenged.
Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, AFSI, (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.
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A View From Campus: Universities Are Failing to Protect Debate While Claiming to Defend It
The administration building at the University of Manitoba. Photo: Wiki Commons.
Universities are meant to be spaces where ideas are debated and challenged, but they are also institutions that set the rules for how students participate.
That authority comes with responsibility — but in recent years, administrators have applied their standards unevenly, particularly when protests around Israel and the Palestinians turn disruptive.
Codes of conduct exist because universities believe behavior within their communities should be governed by certain standards. Universities rely on this principle across campus life, yet when protests cross into disruption or intimidation, they often fail to enforce it.
Faced with these realities, masked protesters have repeatedly violated codes of conduct without consequence — for instance, occupying and vandalizing Columbia’s Hamilton Hall in 2024, blocking Jewish students at Yale encampments, and chanting antisemitic slogans at Berkeley rallies. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, screenings documenting the October 7 attacks have required heavy police protection simply to proceed, reflecting an environment in which disruption is anticipated rather than prevented.
These incidents share a common thread: universities reacting to disorder instead of enforcing the baseline conditions that would allow events to occur without intimidation in the first place.
Protest itself is not the problem. The problem arises when demonstrations cross into disruption or intimidation, and institutions fail to enforce the basic rules that protect students and ensure equal access.
One clear example of this inconsistency is how universities handle anonymity during protests. On many campuses, protestors routinely wear masks or face coverings — even when directly engaging with others or disrupting organized events. In theory, anonymity can protect individuals from retaliation. In practice, it removes accountability.
Instead of taking responsibility and addressing the protesters’ behavior adequately, universities have often shifted the burden onto the students.
Jewish and pro-Israel groups are frequently required to coordinate security, accept police presence, or modify events simply to proceed. In some cases, programming continues under heavy supervision; in others, it is quietly scaled back, relocated, or cancelled entirely.
Events that should be educational experiences become exercises in risk management, with students navigating logistical hurdles and hostile crowds rather than engaging in meaningful dialogue.
I saw this firsthand at an event featuring former Israeli soldiers last year. Although the event was initially intended to be on campus, the threat of violence instigated by anti-Zionist protestors “convinced” the only University of Manitoba pro-Israel student group to move it away from the school.
This still didn’t stop around 50 protesters, many masked, from showing up at the new venue to harass and almost assault attendees. Thankfully, there was enough of a police presence to keep everyone safe.
Instead of demanding that certain events have armed guards, administrators should reflect on why some of their students need them in the first place just to voice their opinions. They should ask themselves what they have signaled, intentionally or not, about which behaviors will be tolerated and which will not.
Their inconsistent enforcement has clearly increased the likelihood of harm and discourages students from participating at all.
Universities need to shift their approach to responsibility, and concrete action is required.
Universities should publish clear protest guidelines that address anonymity, define disruption, and outline consequences that are consistently enforced, and then enforce them.
Security requirements should be transparent and scaled to the actual risk level of an event. When an event requires heightened security, violations of conduct aimed at disrupting or preventing it should carry proportionately stronger consequences. Disruptions and disciplinary outcomes should also be publicly reported to ensure accountability.
If universities want to be taken seriously as places of open inquiry, they need to do more than defend debate. They must protect the conditions that make debate possible. Right now, those conditions are eroding not because campuses lack authority, but because they have chosen not to use it when it matters most.
Police can only do so much; universities themselves have a responsibility to ensure that campus culture allows everyone to participate without fear of intimidation or interference.
Adam Katz is a 2025-2026 CAMERA on Campus fellow and a political science and history student at the University of Manitoba.
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PA Court Rules: Terrorists Must Get Pay-for-Slay Salaries — No Exceptions
A Palestinian Hamas terrorist shakes hands with a child as they stand guard as people gather on the day of the handover of Israeli hostages, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
The Palestinian Authority (PA)’s Pay-for-Slay policy is now widely and publicly acknowledged.
PA officials have refused to say whether they will appeal a Palestinian court ruling earlier this week that ordered Pay-for-Slay to be resumed to a jailed terrorist who filed a lawsuit after it was suspended.
The ruling sets a legal precedent for the immediate resumption of salaries of 1,600 jailed terrorists who had them suspended last year even while salaries continued for thousands of other jailed terrorists, including through shifting the manner of payment, hidden means, or otherwise.
According to an article in the UK Arab news website Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the Court found the PA’s Pay-for-Slay law is still in effect:
The Independent Commission for Human Rights (‘Public Complaints Commission’) [parentheses in source] in Palestine relied on the decision of the Ramallah Administrative Court, which was issued yesterday, Monday, [May 4, 2026,] in order to cancel the cessation of the salary payment of prisoner minor Ahmed Firas [PMW was unable to determine the details of his crimes -Ed.], …and with the aim of ending the salary crisis of approximately 1,600 prisoners [i.e., terrorists] whose salaries were stopped.
These salary payments were halted three months after Palestinian [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas issued a presidential decree, according to which the allowances of the Palestinian prisoners being paid by the PA were transferred to the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution [PNEEI; refers to Abbas’ revision of “Pay-for-Slay,” see note below -Ed.]…
Yesterday, the Ramallah Administrative Court issued a decision to cancel the ‘implied decision’ of the [PA] minister of finance, according to which the salary of prisoner Ahmed Firas Hassan was stopped in mid-2025.
The Independent Commission [for Human Rights] filed a lawsuit to cancel this decision in August 2025. The Commission emphasizes that this is a precedent that can be relied upon to renew the salaries of more than 1,600 prisoners.
…
[ICHR] Legal Advisor Attorney Ahmed Nasra told [UK Arab news website] Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the legal argument was based on how the decision to stop the salaries is illegal. According to him, the Basic Law obliges the State of Palestine to pay salaries to this sector, based on Article 22 of the amended Basic Law, which states: ‘The care for the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners, and the care for the wounded, injured, and disabled, is a duty whose provisions are regulated by law, and the [Palestinian] National Authority ensures for them educational services and health and social insurance.’ Additionally, the argument was also based on the Prisoners and Released [Prisoners] Law. The decision to stop the salaries was implemented without an official document indicating the decision, and therefore it was considered an ‘implied decision’ of the minister of finance, meaning an unwritten decision – a position that was adopted by the court that ruled accordingly. [emphasis added]
[Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, UK Arab news website, May 5, 2026]
The PA now refuses to say whether it will appeal the ruling, which is the only way the implementation of the ruling could be stopped, or even delayed:
“The newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed tried to get a response from the Ministry of Finance but received no answer, and also approached the [PLO] Commission of Prisoners and Released [Prisoners’ Affairs] and the [PA-funded] Prisoners’ Club, but the heads of these bodies preferred not to respond.”
[Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, UK Arab news website, May 5, 2026]
It’s not apparent why this specific group of terrorists had seen their salaries suspended in the first place when most others didn’t. As Palestinian Media Watch has previously documented, Pay-for-Slay continues unabated for thousands of other jailed terrorists.
But what the PA court has done is exposed the con game that the PA has been doing to hide Pay-for-Slay from the eyes of Western countries since last year.
ICHR Attorney Ahmed Nasra told Hebron’s Radio Alam the PA lawyers didn’t even try to argue that the prisoner wasn’t entitled to a salary, but simply claimed some technical rationale for the suspension.
The Court, meanwhile, accepted the counter argument that the terrorist had been getting a salary and was simply entitled to continue getting it, under law:
Ahmed Nasra and Al-Alam host Samer Al-Ruwaished
Host: “Was there an opposing party … a representative or lawyer from the [PA] Ministry [of Finance] against which you filed the petition? Were certain arguments presented to the court as to why they stopped this person’s salary?”
Ahmed Nasra: “Of course, the administrative prosecution represents the [PA] governmental entities. We — I as the lawyer — represent the appellant, the one who filed the petition. And the administrative prosecution is the one representing the governmental ministries and the government. The defense of the administrative prosecution was mainly procedural and formal, meaning they did not argue whether the prisoner is entitled or not entitled to a salary; they did not enter into that matter. Rather, they argued that there was a defect in the lawsuit, that there was a defect in the procedures, formal matters of this kind…
This person already meets the conditions for receiving a salary, let’s say… for salary eligibility … He was, as you know, one of those 1,600 prisoners who were already receiving salaries initially.”
Host:“Right, they are not asking for a [new] salary, they have already been [on the list of recipients].”
Ahmed Nasra: “Yes, exactly. Therefore, you are talking about 1,600 cases of people who already meet the conditions. In other words, the problem was not in that. Therefore, the administrative prosecution … did their job and their role in the case. They had no reservation and did not appeal on the matter of meeting the eligibility conditions. And this makes sense.”
Host: “And this perhaps also helped in reaching this decision, which restores the situation to its previous state, since [the salaries] were legal in the first place.” [emphasis added]
[Al-Alam radio station (Hebron), Facebook page, May 4, 2026]
Enough is enough. The PA incentivizing terror through Pay-for-Slay must be stopped completely in every method that it is delivered — whether it be through salaries, stipends, pensions, or hiring policies. The PA that passed the law mandating Pay-for-Slay must provide a legal remedy to stop it once and for all — now.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.