(JNS) The Palestinian Authority released a draft of its new constitution earlier this month. While it mirrors those of Western democracies in form, ultimately it advances a radical Palestinian ideology that leaves no room for the State of Israel or coexistence, observers tell JNS.
While the draft constitution appears to check every box expected of Western-style governance—“parliamentary democracy,” “due process,” “free and fair elections”—a closer reading reveals a second set of contradictory values: those of Sharia law, pay-for-slay, and the “right of return,” the destruction of Israel through demographic means.
“It’s a document of extraordinary hypocrisy,” Maurice Hirsch, director of the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), told JNS. “They pretend to adopt Western societal norms, but underneath they completely contradict everything they say they adopt.”
Perhaps the most blatant inconsistency is the constitution’s protection of “martyrs” in not one, but two articles. Martyrs is the PA’s term for terrorists who carry out attacks against Israelis. Its “Martyrs Fund,” known in the West as pay-for-slay, is the program by which it provides monthly stipends to terrorists and their families, a financial reward for their violent acts.
In Article 24 of the draft constitution, the PA says it will “work to provide protection and care for the families of martyrs and the wounded and prisoners and those released from the occupation prisons.” Article 44 reiterates that the law will provide “care for the families of martyrs, the wounded, and prisoners, and those released.”
Hirsch asked: “How does that square with ‘Article 63—Protection from all forms of violence?’” That article states, “The State of Palestine is committed to taking the necessary legislative, administrative, and judicial measures to prevent violence, limit it, and prosecute its perpetrators.”
Although the PA has claimed to have stopped its pay-for-slay program, having come under Western pressure, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), which monitors the PA, in a report earlier this month demonstrated that the PA paid 23,500 terrorists a total of roughly $315 million in 2025.
Hiding it
“In practice we know that the PA’s been doing everything it can to continue paying them while hiding it from the Western countries,” Itamar Marcus, founder and director of PMW, told JNS. “But as we know already, the PA writes what it wants and it declares what it wants for international consumption, but its behavior has no resemblance and isn’t dictated by its public statements.”
Marcus, who said that the PA is essentially putting its ideology into a constitutional format, noted that the document rejects “colonial settlement occupation.” “That’s the fundamental of PA ideology; that Israel is a foreign colonial implant with no right to exist,” he said.
For Hirsch, the “right of return” is another big red flag. The right of return holds that all Palestinian “refugees,” now numbered at nearly six million by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), have a right to return to their ancestors’ former homes in Israel. Israelis from across the political spectrum agree that if implemented, such a plan would overwhelm Israel demographically and spell the end of the Jewish state.
The “right of return” is mentioned several times in the document, including the preamble, Article 12 and Article 69. Those two articles also deal with “unity of the land.” Hirsch said that “nowhere in this constitution does it say that Palestine is anything but all the Land of Israel. If US policy calls for rapprochement between Israel and the Palestinians, this constitution doesn’t say that.
“Everybody should read this document carefully, because it really is an expression of Palestinian ideology,” Hirsch said. “A Palestinian state will not be the end of the conflict with Israel.”
The constitution omits Jews and Israel altogether. “Article 27—Equality” says there will be no discrimination based on religion. The omission is especially glaring in “Article 4—Islam, Shariah and Christianity,” which states, “Christianity has its status in Palestine, and its followers’ rights are respected,” but makes no mention of Judaism and its followers.
Article 27 also states that there will be no discrimination based on gender. That is not consistent with Sharia law, which the constitution establishes as the “primary source” for legislation, Hirsch said. Nor is it consistent with Article 30, which guarantees personal rights and liberties. “Sharia law does not guarantee any type of equality for women,” he said.
The PA constitution comes at the urging of French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. They pushed PA head Mahmoud Abbas on the issue, although it wasn’t anything he wanted to do, said Hirsch, who expects Macron, Starmer and similar leaders will accentuate those articles espousing Western values and designed for foreign consumption, and ignore the rest.
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