By Daled Amos
This week, America First Legal sued President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for violating the Taylor Force Act. The group represents Stuart and Robbi Force, the parents of Taylor Force who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists, Sarri Singer, a survivor of a 2003 terrorist attack, and US Congressman Ronny Jackson (R-TX).
Taylor Force was murdered on March 8, 2016, and despite the fact that he was neither Jewish nor Israeli, the Palestinian Authority repeatedly praised the terrorist who killed Taylor as a martyr:
Biden was Vice President at the time and was in Israel, in Tel Aviv where the attack took place.
“I don’t know exactly whether it was a hundred meters or a thousand meters,” Biden, on a visit to Israel, told reporters about Tuesday’s assault.
“It brings home that it can happen, it can happen anywhere, at any time,” he said, after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Abbas offered condolences at the same time that the official PA News was praising the murderer.
The Taylor Force Act was signed into law in 2018 to stop Abbas and the PA from incentivizing terrorism. According to the summary of the bill:
(Sec. 4) This bill prohibits certain FY2018-FY2023 economic support assistance that directly benefits the Palestinian Authority (PA) from being made available for the West Bank and Gaza unless the Department of State certifies that the PA, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and any successor or affiliated organizations:o are taking steps to end acts of violence against U.S. and Israeli citizens perpetrated by individuals under their jurisdictional control, such as the March 2016 attack that killed former Army officer Taylor Force;
o have revoked any law, decree, or document authorizing or implementing a system of compensation for imprisoned individuals that uses the sentence or incarceration period to determine compensation;
o have terminated payments for acts of terrorism against U.S. and Israeli citizens to any individual who has been fairly tried and imprisoned for such acts, to any individual who died committing such acts, and to family members of such an individual; and
o are publicly condemning such acts of violence and are investigating such acts.
During the Trump administration, payments to the PA were frozen. When he first started resuming aid to the Palestinian Authority, Biden did more than simply undo Trump's policy -- he attempted to bypass the law passed by Congress. When it was announced in March 2021 that the Biden administration would renew funding of the PA despite their refusal to stop "pay for slay" payments to the families of terrorists, it was unclear how the administration intended to avoid the restrictions of the Taylor Force Act:
The State Department has yet to explain how it will resume U.S. aid without violating that law, known as the Taylor Force Act.
A State Department official familiar with the matter told the Washington Free Beacon that "any decisions related to resuming assistance to the West Bank and Gaza will be consistent with requirements under relevant U.S. law."
The question is how the Biden administration will attempt to explain away its violation of the Taylor Force Act.
Concerns were already raised back in 2020 on how they would do this. Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior intelligence and security expert, expected the PA to continue its claim that the payments were based merely on financial considerations. He expected that the Biden administration would pull the same trick as the Obama administration in 2014, when it asked the PA to move the agency in charge of the payments from the PA to the PLO. On that basis alone, the State Department then claimed that the PA was making efforts and that things were moving in the right direction.
But nothing really changed and no action to prevent the payments was taken.
Instead, in April 2021, a package was put together for the Palestinian Arabs that was supposed to avoid circumventing the Taylor Force Act:
o $150 million went to UNRWAAccording to Blinken at the time, the money would not violate the Taylor Force Act because it would not go directly to the PA. Instead, the money would go to agencies that are independent of both the Abbas government and Hamas.
o $75 went to economic development programs in the West Bank and Gaza
o $10 million went to "peace building" initiatives.
Jonathan Tobin notes that according to a Government Accounting Office report that preceded Trump's cutoff of funds, money given to the Palestinian government by US officials was not closely monitored and wound up in the hands of terrorists. While the report indicated that better oversight could solve the problem, it remains unclear how the Biden White House and the usual bureaucracy are going to succeed what they have previously failed to do.
Another issue is that Palestinian NGOs receiving the funding are not really independent of the Palestinian governments, whether these groups deal with Abbas and Fatah in the West Bank or Hamas in Gaza.
An additional point Tobin makes is that the money itself is fungible. The money received by the NGOs is money that the Abbas government might otherwise have had to spend for those non-government purposes. The money from the US thus allows Abbas to divert the money it saves due to US largesse on other purposes, including those that are terror-related.
The State Department itself acknowledged that there is a problem of Abbas funneling money to terrorists. In a March 18 non-public report in 2021,
The State Department admitted it was "unable to certify" to Congress that the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization are complying with the Taylor Force Act, primarily because they have "not terminated payments for acts of terrorism to any individual, after being fairly tried, who has been imprisoned for such acts of terrorism and to any individual who died committing such acts of terrorism, including to a family member of such individuals," according to the report. [emphasis added]
In a separate memo, the State Department also admitted that the PA had "not taken proactive steps to counter incitement to violence against Israel." In other words, they could not certify for Congress that the PA had fulfilled repeated promises to end incitement and recommit itself to peace negotiations.
There is a problem of Abbas encouraging terrorist attacks.
The State
Department admits there is a problem.
The Biden Administration has
failed to present a clear plan on how provide funding for Palestinian Arabs
without it being used for encouraging the murder of Israelis.
Maybe its time to let the Taylor Force Act do the job it was intended for.
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