Blood Money
Time to end terror-funding Palestinian aid
THE dust has settled on Obama’s betrayal of Israel, with the passage on Dec. 24 of Security Council resolution 2334, effectively repealing Resolution 242’s promise of defensible boundaries for Israel and opening the door to a boycott of almost all Israeli-made goods. Shamefully, the Obama administration abstained on the vote, after secretly orchestrating its passage.
It’s been a long time coming. Over the past eight years, the administration has treated Benjamin Netanyahu’s government with contempt, and sought to persuade the American government that we should abandon our historic ally because of Obama’s childish spats with the Jewish state and its leaders.
We’ve shown the back of our hand to others of our closest allies, such as Britain and Canada, but Israel is different. This isn’t about Obama’s siding with Argentina against Britain over the Falklands, or stiffing the Canadians over the Keystone pipeline. It’s about the survival of the Jewish state. It recalls David Low’s cartoon, after the Fall of France in 1940. On the beach a British soldier shakes his fist at the approaching German planes. The caption: “Very well, alone.”
With the resolution, Obama would subject Israel to the opprobrium of world opinion. Not Iran, not Venezuela, not Zimbabwe — the Jewish state. But as it’s lived with the world’s betrayal for all these years, we know what Israel’s response will be: Very well, alone.
That is one solution to the Palestinian problem. The status quo, and the end to the dream in which trading land for peace brings about a “two-state” solution in which two countries, Jewish and Palestinian, might live side by side.
With Resolution 2334, the dream is dead. It declares that Israeli occupation of the territories “constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.” But if Israel has no right to the lands, it has no land to trade in a “land for peace” bargain. Thus, there’s no basis for a negotiated settlement amongst the parties.
But there’s another possibility, come Jan. 20 when we see the last of the Obama administration. The interesting question, then, is what the Trump administration can do to repair the betrayal and idiocy of Obama’s abandonment of Israel.
What’s been suggested is cutting the US contribution to the United Nations. That’s always a good idea, and in any event we pay too much, providing 22 percent of the UN budget. But it’s not going to help Israel.
What is needed, then, is a cut in our contributions to the Palestinian Authority. Following the example set by Britain last October, we should zero out all amounts that the PA gives to terrorists in Israeli jails and their families. That comes to $140 million a year, and that’s the amount by which our contribution to the PA should be cut from the roughly $400 million a year we’ve been giving it.
An executive order cutting such aid would be consistent with congressional appropriations. Call it the Taylor Force order. That’s the name of the American soldier who was killed last year in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. The PA gives the murderer’s family a monthly grant, and we’re giving money for that? Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) is sponsoring legislation on this point, and the administration should get behind him.
That’s for starters. The real obstacle to peace is the PA’s refusal to bargain over land for peace, its insistence on a “right of return” and its support for terrorism. It’s also one of the world’s biggest kleptocracies, which is why the cut off in aid is the only thing that will bring the PA to the bargaining table. Money is the only thing corrupt officials notice, and until we redirect the money, we’re supporting terrorism.
Am I suggesting that all aid to Palestinians be eliminated? No. At the same time the new administration reduces aid to the PA, it should announce plans to give direct support to Palestinians, not through the PA and not through suspect UN bodies such as UNWRA, but by the United States itself, together with other states that might wish to join us such as Russia and Egypt, but in any event not through the Palestinian government.
Build schools, hospitals, homes, shorn of the payoff to kleptocrats. Millions for roads, not a penny for terrorism.