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The Palestinian Authority is proud to fund its terrorists, and President Joe Biden is proud to fund the Palestinian Authority by end-running the Taylor Force Act.
Named for an American killed in a 2016 terror attack in Tel Aviv, the bipartisan law (a vote of 256-167 in the House and 65-32 in the Senate) denies taxpayer funding to the PA until it stops paying hefty stipends to imprisoned or released terrorists and the families of deceased terrorists — whom the PA deems “martyrs.”
The PA spends more than $350 million a year on these “Pay for Slay” rewards, vs. just $220 million for all its other welfare programs combined. Since independent activists have recently made it near-impossible to use normal banks for the checks, it just created a new ATM-card system specifically to keep the funds flowing to some 12,200 terrorists and their survivors.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is in the process of sending $360 million in aid to the Palestinians, arguing that the law doesn’t apply since the humanitarian funds flow via third parties — mainly UNRWA, the UN agency for the Palestinian areas.
And never mind that UNRWA routinely acts more as an arm of the Palestinian authorities than as anything independent. Indeed, US officials admit they can’t even ensure the funds don’t wind up in the hands of Hamas, the proudly terrorist group that controls the Gaza Strip.
Biden is also reopening the (Trump-closed) PA/PLO office in Washington, which directly administers the pay-to-slay program.
All this is supposedly in pursuit of peace, though the last administration’s policies brought more Israeli-Arab rapprochement than the “peace processors” had achieved in decades. Then again, the Biden team is quietly undermining those Abraham Accords.
Until the rulers of the Palestinian Authority stop moving heaven and earth to keep rewarding terrorists who slaughter civilians, they are no kind of “partner for peace” and shouldn’t get a dime of US taxpayers’ money.