A bill slashing funds that benefit the Palestinian Authority will easily pass the Senate’s foreign relations panel, likely before August recess, the leaders of the committee told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The measure conditions the flow of U.S. dollars on whether the PA has stopped monetarily rewarding imprisoned terrorists and their families.
“It’ll be a pretty strong vote,” said Maryland senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the panel. “Hopefully during this work period.”
Tennessee senator Bob Corker, the chairman of the committee, also said he expected a vote soon.
“We have gotten the bill in a place where it’s going to receive overwhelming support,” he said.
The PA spends roughly $300 million a year on payments and benefits to the families of so-called “martyrs” and terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails, while taking in millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. President Donald Trump has called for an end to the payments, a request Palestinian officials have time and again rejected.
A National Security Council spokesperson expressed approval of the legislation to TWS, though stopped short of endorsing it.
“We are deeply sympathetic to the Force family and understand their desire to hold their son’s murderer accountable,” the spokesperson said, referring Taylor Force, Army veteran and graduate student who was fatally stabbed in a March 2016 terror attack in Tel Aviv and for whom the bill is named. “The Taylor Force Act correctly identifies a significant issue and offers an option to address a major issue of concern.”
Lawmakers have remained unequivocal about stopping the payments, even as PA president Mahmoud Abbas has pledged to continue them.
“What Abbas said last week was he would leave his position before he stopped payments for martyrs and prisoners,” South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who introduced the bill in February, told TWS. “Well here’s what I’ll say—you’re not going to get a dime as long as you take American taxpayer money and reward people for killing people like Taylor Force.”
The bill will likely be tweaked before it comes up for a committee vote.
The United States currently sends several kinds of aid to Palestinians; the bill as drafted would cut Economic Support Fund assistance, or indirect economic aid.Lawmakers have been weighing how best to cut funding so that the bill puts pressure on the PA government while leaving humanitarian programs intact. The bill would not cut security assistance.
“PA money is going to be cut off until they change their laws basically rewarding people for being terrorists,” Graham said. “There is some humanitarian aid that will continue to flow to the Palestinian people, but there will be a certification requirement on the Secretary of State to say that they’re actually trying to improve the circumstances.”
Former Bush and Obama administration officials presented lawmakers with a range of options for modifying the bill during a hearing Wednesday.
Ambassador to Israel under Obama Daniel Shapiro recommended redirecting the funding to other programs or letting it accumulate in an account rather than slashing it wholesale. He also suggested including a national security waiver, which he said would give the executive branch more flexibility.
But Elliott Abrams, a former Reagan and Bush administration official, said a waiver would be too tempting.
“There are too many incentives for any administration always to use the discretion you give them to keep the money flowing,” he said.
Cardin, a moment earlier, observed that congressional authority over next steps for PA assistance seemed doubly important.
“Generally, we give pretty much a blank check to the administration on how they use foreign assistance. There’s $260 million appropriated,” he said. “The time has come, Mr. Chairman, where we’re going to be much more prescriptive—I’m hearing that from the testimony here today.”
“The question is, do we just want to make sure the $260 million goes to safe projects such as hospitals and energy payments? Or do we want to have the punitive impact of stopping monies going to the Palestinians with the carrot/stick approach?” he said.
“We’re going to have to have some real stick approach here—cutting funds in order for this to work.”
Corker linked the rigidity of the bill to a broader trend of congressional review, seen in his Iran-Russia sanctions bill and other legislation.
“We’ve broken new ground over the last several years over the congressional review issue,” he said. “[It’s] beginning to take hold in other committees where people realize that our ability to have an effect on executive decisions is appropriate.”
