Tag Archives: PA President Mahmoud Abbas

Why We Need The Taylor Force Act

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This is the summary of the Taylor Force Act (from congress.gov):

Passed House amended (12/05/2017)

Taylor Force Act

(Sec. 4) This bill prohibits certain FY2018-FY2023 economic support assistance that directly benefits the Palestinian Authority (PA) from being made available for the West Bank and Gaza unless the Department of State certifies that the PA, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and any successor or affiliated organizations:

    • are taking steps to end acts of violence against U.S. and Israeli citizens perpetrated by individuals under their jurisdictional control, such as the March 2016 attack that killed former Army officer Taylor Force;
    • have revoked any law, decree, or document authorizing or implementing a system of compensation for imprisoned individuals that uses the sentence or incarceration period to determine compensation;
    • have terminated payments for acts of terrorism against U.S. and Israeli citizens to any individual who has been fairly tried and imprisoned for such acts, to any individual who died committing such acts, and to family members of such an individual; and
    • are publicly condemning such acts of violence and are investigating such acts.

This assistance limitation shall not apply to: (1) the East Jerusalem Hospital Network, (2) wastewater projects, and (3) children’s vaccination projects.

Withheld funds shall remain available for up to two years before being reallocated.

(Sec. 5) The bill prescribes initial and annual reporting requirements.

The important phrase here is that the Palestinians would be required to terminate payments for acts of terrorism to terrorists and their families.

Today The Times of Israel reported the following:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday ordered that the family of a Palestinian terrorist who murdered two Israelis be paid more than $40,000 and be given new housing, the Kan public broadcaster reported.

Ramallah Governor Laila Ghannam, an Abbas appointee, met with the family of Muhannad Halabi and gave them some 30,000 Jordanian Dinars ($42,000), reportedly to help them cover housing costs since their home was destroyed by the IDF following the killings, Kan said.

Ghannam also told the family that Abbas had instructed his security services to help them find permanent housing. Home demolitions are a controversial policy that the IDF says helps deter future terror attacks.

The payments are the first high-profile payments to terrorist families since the Biden administration took office, despite claims that the Palestinians were willing to rethink the controversial policy as part of an effort to improve relations with Washington.

Halabi killed two Israelis, Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Banita, and injured Banita’s wife, Adele, and their 2-year-old son in a stabbing attack in the Old City of Jerusalem on October 3, 2015.

The article concludes:

Abbas severed relations with the Trump administration after US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017 and moved the US embassy there from Tel Aviv in May 2018. He also preemptively rejected Trump’s January 2020 “vision” for Israeli-Palestinian peace. The administration, while repeatedly urging Abbas to reengage, drastically reduced state funding for the Palestinians. The Biden Administration has begun to restore aid to the Palestinians and warm ties.

With President Biden in office, America continues to find itself on the wrong side of history. We have no business using taxpayer dollars to pay terrorists.

The Whole Story

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Yesterday Caroline Glick posted an article in Newsweek about the current war between Israel and the Palestinians. It’s a rather detailed article, so please follow the link above and read the entire article. I will try to summarize some of the important points.

The article reports:

There are two sources of the violence. The first is Palestinian incitement. The second is the support the Palestinians receive from the Biden administration.

Several weeks before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began four weeks ago, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) launched a campaign of incitement across its media organs.

Israel, Fatah and the PA claimed, was defiling and threatening the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is the site where both the Jewish Temples stood. It is the single holiest site in Judaism, and it is also the third-holiest site in Islam.

Fatah’s incitement campaign served two purposes. First, it deflected public attention away from PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to cancel the recent elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and to the PA presidency. Abbas is now in the 16th year of his four-year term—the last PLC elections were held in January 2006. Pressured by the public, Abbas had announced that elections would finally be held beginning this month. But since all the opinion polls since 2006 have shown that Hamas will win any new PA election, Abbas set out to find a way to blame Israel for his refusal to hold elections. He insisted that Israel agree to permit Jerusalem Arabs to vote in Jerusalem itself. Israel refused, maintaining that Jerusalem Arabs could vote in either the PA-controlled areas or online. Abbas then canceled the elections and promptly blamed Israel.

The cancelled elections are actually one of the main roots of the current problem–the attacks on Israel and the Israeli response are a very effective distraction from the fact that Abbas is now in the 16th year of his four-year term.

The article also explains the issue of Sheikh Jarrah:

At the same time, Abbas began stirring up passions by disseminating lies about alleged Israeli encroachments on Al-Aqsa and inciting terrorism. By doing so, Abbas was able to ratchet up his standing with the broader Palestinian public.

Hamas, for its part, wasn’t going to abandon the incitement stage to Fatah. So it joined in the incitement about Al-Aqsa and then opened a new incitement front pertaining to a 50-year property dispute in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in northeastern Jerusalem.

In 1875, the chief rabbis of Jerusalem purchased buildings in the neighborhood and registered their purchase with the Ottoman—and later, British—authorities. In 1948, with the Jordanian conquest of the neighborhood, the buildings were listed under Jordan’s “Register of Enemy Property” and leased to local Arabs. After Israel liberated and unified Jerusalem in 1967, the Jewish landowners registered their buildings again with the Israel Land Authority and began a process that has dragged on ever since of attempting to restore sovereign control over their properties. The Arab tenants, for their part, recognized the Israeli Jewish ownership of the buildings in a 1982 lawsuit. But in the ensuing 39 years, they have appealed every court ruling requiring them to vacate the premises.

In February, the Jerusalem District Court upheld a lower court ruling that required the Arab tenants to vacate the premises and the properties to be transferred to the Jewish owners. The Arabs appealed to the Supreme Court of Israel, which was initially set to hear the appeal last week.

The article concludes:

In a stunning statement Tuesday, as Hamas rained down rockets on Israeli civilian targets and the Israeli military responded with surgical air strikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza, State Department Spokesman Ned Price drew a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians. Price said: “Israel has the right to defend itself and respond to rocket attacks. The Palestinian people also have the right to safety and security, just as Israelis do.”

The message Price sent to Hamas, Fatah and the Israeli Arabs assaulting Israeli Jews is that the U.S. is on their side. They can attack Jews and blame Israel and the Jews for their aggression, and the Biden administration will fund them, defend them and even adopt their anti-Semitic narratives. Palestinians are now certain they will be rewarded, not punished, for their aggression.

So long as this remains the Biden administration’s position, we can expect the latest Palestinian war against Israel to continue. Indeed, so long as this remains the administration’s policy, the danger that the Palestinian war will escalate into a regional onslaught against Israel by Iran’s proxies across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen will only increase.

Unfortunately the election of Joe Biden as President did not bring us closer to peace and normalcy as some people had expected. It has brought national and international turmoil.