When Mahmoud Abbas visited the White House last week, President Trump reportedly requested that he put an end to the policy of paying generous salaries to Palestinians held in Israeli jails for acts of terror. Shortly thereafter, one of Abbas’s top advisers commented that ceasing these payments would be “insane.” All the more reason for Congress to pass the Taylor Force Act, which would withhold funding from the Palestinian Authority until it stops using its money to reward the murder of Israelis. Douglas Feith and Sander Gerber write:
Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA) colleagues are bound and determined to perpetuate the conflict with Israel. Their personal interests require it. If the conflict ended, they would lose foreign aid, which makes their lucrative corruption possible. They would stop receiving invitations to the White House and other gratifying diplomatic attention. They would cease to be the leaders of a long-standing and proudly uncompromising national struggle, forfeiting their self-respect and prestige especially in the Arab and Muslim worlds. For them, peace would be hell.
Peace could enormously benefit the Palestinian people, however. It could open a path to greater freedom and prosperity for them and save their children from the fatal lure of “martyrdom.” Those interests, alas, don’t influence PA policy. . . . [But] that’s the context in which Congress should consider the Taylor Force Act.
Of all that’s wrong with the way the PA operates, nothing is more harmful than the elaborate apparatus it has created to push its people to become terrorists. . . . The PA has created two (two!) ministries specifically for this purpose, with combined budgets exceeding $330 million in 2016. . . . The size of the payments correlates to the number of their victims and the severity of the harm inflicted on them. The payments dwarf the average monthly salaries of ordinary working inhabitants of the West Bank. It’s sick, and it’s expensive. And it’s facilitated by U.S. aid dollars even though some of the victims of this terrorism are, like Taylor Force, U.S. citizens.
Read more on National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447296/pass-taylor-force-act-stop-rewarding-palestinian-terrorists