Israel frets over Congress push to slash Palestinian aid over terror payments
US lawmakers' efforts to further condition assistance to the Palestinian Authority is complicated by Israel's reluctance to undermine a key security partner.
WASHINGTON — A Republican effort to prohibit US aid to the Palestinians until they stop payments to the families of those imprisoned or killed for attacking Israelis is running into opposition from a surprising source: Israel.
Publicly, the Benjamin Netanyahu government supports any effort to stop what it dubs the Palestinian Authority's (PA's) practice of "pay to slay." Privately, however, a number of Israeli officials and pro-Israel advocates fret that a blanket ban on US assistance would undermine Israel's flawed but crucial security partnership with the PA.
Testifying Wednesday at a Senate Foreign Relations hearing about the pending Taylor Force Act, former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said he supported the bill in principle but warned that cutting all economic support to the PA could have a destabilizing effect on Israel. He urged lawmakers to give the Donald Trump administration the flexibility to target cuts as it sees fit.
“I base my judgment that the assistance is valuable in the analysis that’s conveyed to me by the Israeli military leaders I’ve worked with who saw that assistance as having a significant stabilizing impact, which is very much in Israeli security interests,” Shapiro told Al-Monitor.
