While the Palestinian Authority sometimes coordinates with Israel in counterterrorism operations, the Palestinian leadership body has continued to promote violent rhetoric and fund terrorist organizations, according to a report published by the US State Department presented to Congress this week.
Reflecting on actions and statements made from June 2025 until May 2026, the report noted that the PA took actions that contradict its commitments per the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
The resolutions call for Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel and its “right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force,” in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal “from territories of recent conflict.”
The State Department noted that recent statements and actions taken by senior members of the PLO are incompatible with the recognition of Israel and its right to live free from threats.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the report referenced, took a year and a half to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre in which 1200 people were killed, and hundreds abducted.
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub also told Sky News Arabia in October 2025 that he could not condemn the Hamas invasion, and positioned the attacks as part of an armed struggle in response to Israeli actions.
Abbas’s advisor, Mahmoud al-Habbash, also condemned Hamas’s actions in July 2025, but only for its consequences for the people of Gaza and not for the brutality the terror group demonstrated on Israeli civilians.
State Dept. says changes made by PA are 'insufficient'
The PA has also continued to incite and delegitimize Israel in its education system despite promises to reform, the report noted.
Head of the PA Directorate of Education in North Hebron, Bassem Jaber, defended in a November 2025 interview on the official PA television station a map published in Palestinian textbooks which presents the entire land of Israel as “Palestine.”
“They confiscated…maps of Palestine. This is the map of Palestine, and they asked why we didn’t write the word Israel on it? We are in the state of Palestine, and this is the map of Palestine, and we educate our children according to the Palestinian curriculum,” he told the interviewer.
The State Department asserted that there were insufficient changes to the Palestinian curriculum over the assessed period and that children were still being taught to accept antisemitic ideologies, glorify violence and terrorism, and not recognize the Jewish state in PA-run or regulated schools.
As addressed in a previous report presented to Congress, the PA has maintained its “pay-for-slay” policies, which compensate terrorists and their families who have or are serving time in an Israeli prison. Israel reported that the PA paid out roughly $160 million in 2025, including $125 million to Palestinian terrorists and $29 million to the families of Palestinian terrorists.
Abbas admitted during the Eighth General Conference of Fatah last week that the PA intended to continue to make payments to “prisoners” and required funds being withheld by Israel to do so.
Despite failing to meet its obligations for the recognition of a Palestinian state, the report accuses Abbas of trying to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to prematurely push forward statehood.
Abbas claims Palestinian State 'committed to implementing reforms'
On November 25, 2025, Abbas stated in remarks delivered on his behalf at the UN during the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” that “the Palestinian State [continued its] full commitment to implementing all the reforms it has pledged to undertake in order to strengthen a free, independent, and democratic Palestinian state, committed to a culture of peace and dialogue.”
Similar claims were made when Abbas attended the annual political conference of Italy’s Brothers of Italy party in Rome.
“Our Palestinian people aspire to live in their homeland in freedom and dignity, in a modern state that believes in democracy, the peaceful transfer of power, pluralism, equality, and the rejection of violence,” he said at the Italian conference in December, 2025.
Though the State Department stressed insufficient changes were made, the report did note that the PA had on some occasions collaborated with Israel to combat security threats.
During the reporting period, PA officials maintained contact with Israeli counterparts and actively shared information on terrorist threats and intensified efforts to disrupt Hamas’s political and terrorist activities in the West Bank following the signing of the Egypt of the Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity in Gaza in October.
The report’s findings will likely mean that Ramallah will not be able to receive funds from Washington under the 2018 Taylor Force Act. This would likely continue to cause financial strain in the West Bank, which has already seen school hours reduced to three days a week, and public sector employees have received only 80% of their wages for years.