The PLO Shouldn’t Have a Mission in Washington

Pursuant to the Oslo Accords, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—an umbrella group dominated by the Fatah party—serves as the international representative of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and thus for some time operated a diplomatic office in the U.S. capital. In 2018, the Trump administration closed it down because of the PLO’s ongoing support for terrorism. The Biden administration is now considering reopening it. Elliott Abrams explains that doing so won’t be easy, or helpful:

It won’t be easy because it seems to be unlawful. [The] Taylor Force Act, . . . named after an American soldier murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in 2018, states that the PA and PLO will be liable for damages awarded by a jury if they open offices in the United States or make payments to Palestinian terrorists being held in Israeli prisons. . . . How the administration plans to get around the Taylor Force Act, and why it believes it is sensible and moral to do so, remain unclear. It is certainly not necessary to [channel] aid through the PA to help Palestinians.

Unless and until the PA stops its “pay for slay” payments to convicted terrorists and their families, . . . help for Palestinians should be provided through reputable NGOs and international organizations, and without handing any funds to the PA. The administration should in fact be worrying more about how to help Palestinians and less about rebuilding “connective tissue” to the PA and PLO leadership—which is viewed as incompetent and corrupt by millions of Palestinians.

There is another reason that opening a PLO office right now would be a foolish and untimely step. Right now, Hamas and Fatah are negotiating over the Palestinian elections planned for May 22. Hamas has one key goal, which is to become part of the PLO. It may also become part of the PA government. . . . Will the administration actually open an office in Washington for the PLO now, when its newest member after the May elections may be Hamas?

Read more at Pressure Points

More about: Palestinian terror, PLO, U.S. Foreign policy

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF