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A30
March 27 2008
wo weeks ago, the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency reported
that American officials are
again pressing Congress
to open up the U.S. aid
pipeline to the Palestinian
Authority. And then on
March 19, as Reuters
reported, Washington
agreed to transfer $150
million in budgetary sup-
port to the PA to help
Mahmoud Abbas's govern-
ment, out of $550 million
pledged at a donors' con-
ference last year.
If the plea sounds
familiar, it ought to. Since
the 1993 Oslo Accords, Americans have
been subsidizing the activities of the
P.A. to the tune of hundreds of millions
of dollars per year.
Today, as in the past, the arguments
in favor of this policy are urgent.
We are told by both administration
officials who are friends of Israel and
by some Israelis that unless we help
fund the training and the payment
of Palestinian security forces, the P.A.
will have no way to cope with terror-
ists who want to sink any chance of a
two-state solution, which would enable
Israel to live side-by-side with a peace-
ful Palestinian partner.
With Hamas in control of Gaza, the
P.A., under the current leadership of
Mahmoud Abbas, is, we are informed,
the only address for creating a mod-
erate force that will work for peace.
Given the alternative of the Iranian-
backed llamas or the equally unpalat-
able choices of either Israel reoccupy-
ing the territories or an international
peacekeeping force doing so, reinforc-
ing the P.A. seems to make sense. But
does it really?
Doubts about the wisdom of the
policy have led Rep. Nita Lowey, D-
N.Y., and Rep. Beam Ros-Lehtinen,
R-Fla. — respectively, the chair
and the ranking minority member
of the House Foreign Operations
Subcommittee — to place a hold on
a request of another $150 million in
direct assistance to the P.A. It now
seems to have gotten around that and
has even asked the committee to okay
an additional $25 million in indirect
funding for the military training pro-
gram.
Both Lowey and Ros-Lehtinen
rightly worry about the com-
mitment of Abbas and his
Fatah Party to peace. They
cite recent statements by
Abbas in which he would not
rule out a return to "armed
resistance" against Israel. The
support by the P.A. media
for attacks against Israelis,
such as the slaughter of
eight students at a Jerusalem
yeshivah this month, as well
as the ongoing blitz of south-
ern Israel by Hamas missiles,
is also reason to doubt the
PA's sincerity.
Deeper Indications
The P.A. also continues to honor
the memory of slain terrorists as
"martyrs" and, as the Jerusalem Post
reported last week, plans to celebrate
Israel's 60th birthday by having Arab
refugees rush Israel's borders to pro-
mote a "right of return:' which is syn-
onymous with the destruction of the
Jewish state.
Supporters of aid respond that these
statements do not reflect Abbas' real
goals. Yet, they ignore the fact that
what the P.A. has done for the past
15 years is to legitimize a Palestinian
culture in which political plaudits are
won only by killing Jews. Indeed, via
its control of broadcast outlets, news-
papers and the schools, the P.A. has
solidified a mindset of hate.
Just as bad is the history of attempts
to create a P.A. security force. The Oslo
agreements called for the creation of
a Palestinian police force that would
combat terrorists. But Yassir Arafat
had other ideas.
While most of the billions that came
his way via aid from the European
Union and the U.S. went into the pock-
ets or Swiss bank accounts of Fatah
officials, some of it was used to create
a Byzantine web of Palestinian "secu-
rity" agencies whose purposes were
anything but peaceful. When push
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