Summary
The Palestinian Authority is accused of maintaining security forces substantially larger than the level contemplated under the Oslo arrangements. From 2008 through 2025, spending on salaries and social benefits for these forces is stated to have exceeded $20 billion, with about $16 billion attributed to personnel beyond the cited limit. This spending is contrasted with shortcomings in Palestinian health infrastructure and continued reliance on treatment in Israel. The argument concludes that Palestinian leadership prioritized security capabilities over investment in civilian needs.
Key Takeaways
- The Palestinian Authority Security Forces are described as having grown to roughly five times the personnel level envisioned under the Oslo framework.
- PA budget reports are cited as showing more than NIS 62 billion in security-force salaries and social benefits between 2008 and 2025, with roughly NIS 50 billion characterized as spending above what a smaller force would have required.
- The central argument is that resources devoted to security forces could instead have supported hospitals, health care, and other civilian services.
For the past 20 years, the Palestinian Authority, in complete breach of the Oslo Accords, has built a massive terror army.1 While the Oslo Accords envisaged the PA operating a civilian police force numbering 12,000 personnel, the PA never respected this limitation. In practice, as the following graph shows, for two decades the number of members of the PA Security Forces (PASF) has ballooned to five times the agreed size:
Number of members in the PASF2
According to budget performance reports published by the PA, from 2008 through 2025, the PA spent over $20 billion (NIS 62,245,826,504) on salaries and social benefits for PASF members.
In other words, had the PA complied with its commitments, it could have saved approximately $16 billion (NIS 49,796,661,203) in salaries alone instead of building the terror army.
To this day, the PA does not have a modern and professional hospital,3 and still sends thousands of Palestinians every year to receive medical treatment in Israel. The additional money paid to cover the salaries of the PA’s terror army could have been used, for example, to build hospitals and improve the health care provided to the Palestinians.
Unfortunately for the Palestinians, the PA and the Palestinian leadership place greater value on building the terror force it intends to use to attack Israel, rather than providing the Palestinians with basic services, such as health care and building hospitals.
In the same way that Hamas spent hundreds of millions of dollars building the Gazan terror tunnels instead of building and developing the “Gazan Riviera,” the PA in Judea and Samaria has spent over $16 billion building a terror army, rather than providing for the basic needs of the Palestinians.
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Notes
1 For a comprehensive overview of the PA Terror Army, see: https://jcfa.org/book/the-new-palestinian-terror-army-planning-the-next-october-7th-massacre/
2 Ibid
3 https://jcfa.org/the-pa-plan-to-steal-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-in-foreign-aid/
