Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has issued a decree overturning a system of payments to the families of Palestinians imprisoned or killed by Israeli forces that has been a longstanding source of friction with the United States, Reuters reports.

The current system has been dubbed “pay for slay” by critics who say it rewards the families of militants who carry out attacks on Israel, although that label is rejected by Palestinians.

Payments will be transferred to a government body affiliated with the president’s office, according to the text of the decree, with a new disbursement mechanism, details of which have so far not been announced.

Scrapping the system has been a major demand of successive US administrations on the Palestinian Authority, the body set up three decades ago under the Oslo interim peace accords which exercises limited governance in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

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