America should have learned that the Palestinian Authority believes that there are no consequences for its institutionalized corruption and its compensation system for terrorists and their families.
If the Senate passes and President Donald Trump signs the Taylor Force Act, ending Palestinian Authority funding unless the PA stops its payments to terrorists and their families, would the PA really collapse, and if so what would be the consequences?
The US House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have already approved the Taylor Force legislation. Now it’s up to the full Senate to vote, awaiting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring it to the floor for a full vote or attach it to other legislation.
Nearly half of all American foreign aid to the PA goes to prisoners ($345 million) and the families of so-called “martyrs,” what Americans call terrorists. The more heinous the terrorism, the more money a prisoner and his family get for a lifetime. The Taylor Force Act aims to end this practice.
As Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee said, the PA created a “system in law that pays Palestinian prisoners… more money if they have longer [prison] sentence… Prisoners purposely commit more heinous crimes to get more money for families… PA incentivizes terrorism.”
His colleague Rep. Ed Royce (R-California), the chairman of the House Foreign Relations committee said, “With this legislation, we are forcing the PA to choose between US assistance and these morally reprehensible policies.”
Critics of this legislation claim that the PA would collapse without American aid, being replaced by a more radical entity like Hamas, hurting Israeli and American security interests. Given the PA-Hamas reconciliation agreement last year and Hamas’s stating this month that it will place its weapons under PA control if it can join the PLO, the distinction between these two rivals may have dramatically dissipated.
Of the $600m. per year given to the PA, approximately $290m. is from the State Department under USAID for debt relief, NGOs, hospitals, economic development etc., $355m. goes to UNRWA and the smallest amount, $55m., to PA security forces. Aid to PA security working with Israel would not be threatened.
But from an American taxpayer perspective, rewarding terrorists is abhorrent.
Which brings us to UNRWA, the humanitarian UN organization that perpetuates the conflict by counting the descendants of Palestinian refugees as refugees, refusing to resettle them, while teaching an anti-Israel curriculum in its school system.
UNRWA is the next congressional target for reform.
President Trump has threatened to decrease aid to UNRWA after the condemnation of the United States by the vast majority of UN General Assembly members in the aftermath of the US acknowledging Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
UNRWA treats Palestinian refugees differently than any other refugees in the world.
For Syrian refugees living in Europe, their children born in Europe are not counted as refugees and are encouraged by the UN to resettle. But for a Palestinian who has lived in Europe for the past 70 years, their European- born children are considered stateless Palestinians in perpetuity, given the false hope of a “right of return,” a euphemism for the demographic destruction of Israel.
So, could a dramatic decrease in funding destabilize the PA, or is it time to stop the rationalizations and realpolitik and end funding of terrorists, and a system that has not only perpetuated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but has ossified any potential progress?
As for UNRWA, there would be humanitarian issues with a significant decrease in funding. According to The Times of Israel, UNRWA “educates half a million children… doctors see eleven million patients per year, and UNRWA conducts vocational training for 9000 young people” annually.
The best strategy for the time being is to continue UNRWA funding but only if Congress writes and the president signs legislation that changes UNRWA’s definition of “refugee” to that of the UNHCR (UN High Commission for Refugees), with Palestinian refugees’ descendants being treated as every other descendant of a refugee in the world. This must also be accompanied by the demand that UNRWA end its incitement against Israel and Jews in UNRWA-run schools and related facilities.
As for the Taylor Force Act, it makes sense to stop literally paying for terrorism against civilians with American taxpayer money.
America should have learned that the PA believes that there are no consequences for its institutionalized corruption and its compensation system for terrorists and their families. Some potential terrorists arrested during the “knife intifada,” when asked why they were committing terrorism, admitted that they only needed a few more years in prison to financially set their families for life.
This may be a propitious point in time for action on these issues, as Sunni Arab nations are more interested in working with Israel and the US on their growing problems with Iran, and less concerned with their Palestinian cousins.
So will the PA collapse if the Taylor Force Act and UNRWA reform are instituted? It is all up to the Palestinians.
All they have to do to continue their aid is to stop paying terrorists, while preparing their people for the hard choices that need to be made if they truly believe in co-existing as two states for two peoples.
It is all up to them.
The writer is director of MEPIN™, the Middle East Political and Information Network™. Dr. Mandel regularly briefs members of Congress and think tanks on the Middle East. He is a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I am reminded, by your remarks on Nth; Korea, and Racoczy, that I have been a voracious reader of Science Fiction since i was about 8-9 years old. My new brother-in-law used to get them in a buy/exchange store and had a different one every week, which he’d lend to me. This was in the early days of the large Pulp Magazines. Anyway, (I’m going through The Gutenberg Project alphabetically), am just now reading all the stories which were illustrated by Ed Emsh(wiler), mostly different writers, many from the 1950s during the Cold War, expecting atom bombs any minute, and featuring Orwellian societies and blaring loudspeakers, thought police etc.
As for the number 9..maybe you should have put 999, and driven a certain entity (no names please..) COMPLETELY crazy.. I am reminded of the Beast with the 12 1/2 horns walking over a valley of crumbling bones, and other desiccated by-products. The half-horn resulted from catching it in the door on the way out. A barmitzvah of horns….Maybe blowing on that half, to cool it, produced a sound that ushered in shofar useage, becoming a Jewish emblem…….and etc. etc. etc.
u s of a as ISRAEL talk the talk but DON’T walk the walk
@ Edgar G.:
Liberal think in platitudes like “a mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
If it’s longer than a sentence they can’t grasp it.
They have programmed themselves with slogans for too long.
It’s like Communist satellite regimes after WW2 like Hungary under Racoczy regime with bullhorns everywhere.
Or N. Korea where every home has to have the radio station on 24/7 playing the supreme leader’s speeches. They may turn it down but not off. The privileged families that is, who have radios.
I will get off now with only this one witticism because a stitch in time saves 9 (I gave Michael S. a number to play with. I’m so nice.)
What the blazes difference does it make that UNWRA”educates” 500.000 children a year, when the education is heavily geared towards jihadism and terror against Israel. So the schools should be defunded, until they cancel their “curriculum” nd replace it with a normal one, to be examined and checked yearly. Also hold refresher couses for as many older children as can be reached, to “dejihadize” them, and try to undo the damage thev’ve cause their minds.
As for the “vocational training of 9,000 a year, this should allow them to emigrate or move to where jobs are available, thus taking them off the “refugee” rolls. Otherwise there’s no point in their vocational training. I would expect, the students already having gone through the school system of “terrorism against Israel” that they would chose a trade useful in, say, making bombs or weapons etc. .
Whether defunding the PA or UNRWA will cause hardship or cause HAMAS to take over is irrlevant. It is morally reprehensible for the USA or anyone else to fund these evil organisations. If Israel’s Security is threatened by HAMAS terrorism then war against them and destroy them.
Wanting to avoid conflict with terrorists can never be used as an excuse to fund them. That is like paying a bully protection money when you know that you are much stronger than he is and you can just kick his backside.