The Biden administration is facing new demands for information about its plan to resume funding of the Palestinian Authority, which runs a “pay-for-slay” program to compensate terrorists who kill people in the Middle East.
The funding likely would violate the Taylor Force Act, a federal law that prohibits funding for the PA until it stops “incentivizing terrorism” by making huge payments to terrorists and their families.
The PA has been sending hundreds of millions of dollars annually to terrorists who have killed Israeli and American citizens.
The American Center for Law and Justice said it launched the Freedom of Information Act campaign with the Biden State Department seeking records “pertaining to the State Department’s knowledge and efforts” regarding attempts to boost American financial donations to the PA “in spite of limitations imposed by the Taylor Force Act.”
The ACLJ warned that “if taxpayer aid to the Palestinian Authority continues, it will be an added obstacle to achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.”
“The Palestinian Authority is notorious for its ‘pay-for-slay’ policy in which it spends huge amounts of money in payments to terrorists and their families,” the ACLJ said.
The Taylor Force Act was passed by Congress following the 2016 murder of an American tourist in Israel by a Palestinian terrorist. The PA celebrated Taylor Force’s killer as a heroic martyr, and the terrorist’s family began receiving benefit payments from the PA.
Mike Pompeo, who was secretary of state for President Trump, now is the ACLJ’s senior counsel for global affairs.
“The Taylor Force Act corrected a profoundly immoral policy that had American taxpayer funds being laundered unwittingly through PA accounts to incentivize murder,” Pompeo said. “The bill also offered a simple litmus test of the PA’s seriousness about making peace: If the PA cannot revoke the laws and infrastructure conferring special treatment for terrorists, then the PA itself remains an obstacle to the ‘peace process.’
“We must not allow this administration to continue funding programs that directly contradict American principles abroad and provide support to terrorists,” he said.
The Washington Free Beacon said the Biden administration “privately confirmed to Congress last week that the Palestinian Authority has continued to use international aid money to reward terrorists but said the finding won’t impact its plans to restart funding.”
And Palestinian Media Watch recently reported the PA was disguising its payments to terrorists.
The report said: “Palestinians released from Israeli prisons will be provided with special jobs within the PA. These 7,500 positions can only be held by those imprisoned by Israel, notably those who were convicted for terrorism offenses. By holding these special positions, the stipends will be disguised as paychecks, PMW alleged. The concealed stipends would frustrate interference by Israel, the U.S. or the EU.”
The ACLJ said: “The Taylor Force Act is clear that unless and until the secretary of state can certify that the pay-for-slay payments have stopped, the federal government is prohibited from sending more foreign aid funds to the Palestinian Authority. That clearly has not happened, and the Biden administration admits it. There is no way around this.”
The FOIA request asks for access to all records and communications concerning aid to the Palestinian Authority.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, just days ago warned that there will be trouble because of Biden’s plan to resume funding for terrorists.
“In 2019, the Palestinian Authority expressed its intention to spend $342.6 million on rewards for terrorists and their families. We’re not talking about a few dollars here and there,” Cruz said. “And now, with Joe Biden’s decision, a significant chunk of that $342 million is going to have come from you and me.”
“We’re sending American taxpayer funds to [the Palestinian Authority] so they can fund terrorists,” the senator said, “and as a result of Joe Biden’s decision, Americans will die. Israelis will die. This money that Joe Biden is sending to terrorists will be used to commit more acts of terrorism, to incentivize terrorists, to murder women, to murder children.
“Joe Biden decided that funding terrorists who kill Americans apparently is a good idea,” he said.
President Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize after his administration brokered four peace agreements between Israel and Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently indicated another four agreements are in the works.
He did not name the nations but also “did not dispel rumors” about deals with Niger, Mauritania, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
WND reported in September the editor of a Saudi Arabian newspaper said peace agreements with Israel are the only option for Arab nations that have opposed Israel for generations.
Khalid bin Hamad Al-Malik, the editor of Al-Jazirah, wrote two days before the Israel-UAE-Bahrain peace deals that the Arabs “tried war and were defeated; they tried hostility towards Israel and gained nothing; they tried to reconcile [with Israel] on their own terms and failed.”
Trump’s realignment of Middle East relations, mostly by bypassing the Palestinian faction and working directly with other governments, was praised by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as “brilliant.” He unsuccessfully urged the Biden administration to stay the course that produced the agreements called the Abraham Accords.
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