President Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, issued a decision-law to cancel the articles contained in the laws and regulations related to the system of paying financial allocations to the families of prisoners, martyrs, and the wounded, in the Prisoners’ Law and the regulations issued by the Council of Ministers and the Palestine Liberation Organization, as well as to transfer the computerized cash assistance program, its database, and its financial, local, and international allocations from the Ministry of Social Development to the Palestinian National Institution for Economic Empowerment.

Under these amendments:

1) All families that benefited from previous laws, legislation and systems are subject to the same standards applied without discrimination to all families benefiting from social protection and care programmes, in accordance with the standards of comprehensiveness and justice, the conditions of which apply to all families in need of assistance in Palestinian society.

2) Under this amendment, the powers of all protection and social care programs in Palestine have been transferred to the Palestinian Economic Empowerment Foundation, which will assume the responsibilities of providing protection and social care programs to all Palestinian families in need of assistance and beneficiaries without discrimination.

The Palestinian Economic Empowerment Foundation has an independent legal personality managed by a Board of Trustees appointed by the President. It operates in accordance with its law, tasks, and transparent work mechanisms and is subject to administrative and financial oversight standards, including oversight by international institutions, to ensure transparency of procedures and fair distribution.

Accordingly, the Palestinian National Foundation for Economic Empowerment will seek to mobilize all possible funds, grants and allocations for the various categories of our people, especially in light of the significant increase in the number of families in need of social care, support and empowerment after the war on Gaza and the West Bank, in a way that contributes to strengthening the steadfastness of our people, similar to the various social care systems adopted by different countries of the world that have strong and institutionalized social care systems.

This came within the framework of strengthening the status of the State of Palestine and its legal position in the United Nations and various international institutions, by obtaining more international recognition and full membership for the State of Palestine in the United Nations, and within the framework of working to protect the supreme national interests, and to face the new burdens of helping our people in the Gaza Strip, especially children who have lost their breadwinners, and families who have lost their means, and with the aim of restoring international aid programs that were suspended in the past years, which we need to implement development and economic recovery programs, and to support reconstruction programs, and with the aim of lifting the financial siege, and stopping the illegal deductions made by the Israeli occupation authorities from Palestinian taxpayers’ money, which have reached billions of shekels.