On Sunday, the 20th anniversary of a bombing in Jerusalem that killed nine people and wounded more than 80 others, the Palestinian Authority (PA) increased payments to the families of the imprisoned perpetrators.

In the midst of the Second Intifada, on July 31, 2002, an east Jerusalem-based Hamas cell carried out a bombing in the Mount Scopus campus cafeteria of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

In the 20 years since the bombing, the West Bank’s PA has paid the families of the attackers more than $2.5 million, in what some call rewards and others call allocations.

This month, as the convicted Palestinians reached their two-decade mark in prison, the PA is set to increase monthly payments to their families by 14.3 percent. Some see it as an automatic, incremental raise, while others consider it an active step to award terrorists for murder, in what is dubbed the “Pay to Slay” policy.

“It’s time for Israel to tell the international community that if you’re going to talk about peace and reach an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, this cannot go on,” Dr. Emmanuel Navon, an international relations expert at Tel Aviv University, told i24NEWS.

“Even if we don’t talk right now about a political solution between Israel and the PA, as we talk about reducing the conflict and promoting common projects, this is just incompatible with the very concept of peace.”

Israel’s political and security cabinet on Sunday approved the deduction of approximately $176 million from the tax money that Israel collects for the PA, a recurrent response to payments to the families of prisoners and terrorists by Ramallah.