Trump strategy includes cutting american funding to terrorism
Do we want to understand what Donald Trump is doing, instead of engaging in the popular game of perpetual panic and denigration? Let’s review his remarks: “When I came into office, I promised to look at the world’s challenges with open eyes and very fresh thing. We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past… My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.”
That’s what Trump said when he announced the U.S.’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital: “A new approach.” What does it entail? Many have ignored these words and have preferred to simply demonize Trump as usual. Among these, unfortunately, are Europe’s leaders – what a disappointment - who fail to understand that their role as guarantors of peace would be exalted and not pushed aside by the acquisition of the fact that if we continue like this we’ll achieve nothing.
The first theme was that of truth: Israel is in the Middle East to stay, the Jews are not Polish or Moroccans, who just happened to stumble by chance in the region (I heard an important Palestinian official incessantly repeat this to me during a radio broadcast), but children of a people indigenous to the area who always had Jerusalem as their capital.
However, the other basic point that must be understood is the following: victory will not be achieved through terrorism. These two essential factors, identity and the rejection of terrorism, along with the incitement that sustains it, is the task that the American administration is currently undertaking. Last Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass the Taylor Force Act, named for an American stabbed to death in Tel Aviv in 2016. When the bill eventually also passes in the Senate this will allow the U.S. to reduce most of the $280 million that it annually gives to the Palestinian Authority unless it stops paying monthly cash stipends to convicted Palestinian terrorists and their families.
In an important paper published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser outlined the PA’s economic commitment of sustaining terror with money. In 2014, it paid about $300 million to prisoners and continued to sustain them when they were released, as well as to pay the families of those who died during an attack, perhaps in a suicide attack. The PA used more than 20 percent of the annual foreign aid it receives to pay these salaries. The monthly stipend for those imprisoned 3 years or less is 340 Euros while those imprisoned between 15-20 years receive 1700 Euros. Yet if the sentence is over 30 years the terrorist is rewarded with 2900 Euros. When the prisoners are released they take home between 1270 to 21,260 Euros annually, to start over. The bigger the attack, the more Abu Mazen’s Palestinian Authority handsomely rewards these terrorists, more than $30 thousand in total.
The Taylor Act aims to cut funding to the Palestinians if they don’t cease their practice of incentivizing terrorism by financing it. Naturally, tied to this is its propaganda of incitement that pervades Palestinian society, which can be found in its media, schools, institutions, and at events named after terrorists whom they consider “martyrs” and whose portraits are seen everywhere.
It’s a gigantic castle: Palestinian culture has built it alongside the re-vindication of their rights, while reaching an agreement with Israel has never been successful, not even in front of the most favorable offers, at Camp David as in Annapolis.
Palestinian terrorism, devised by Arafat as a weapon, subsequently became a tool that was implemented worldwide and led to horrible attacks like Entebbe, the Munich Olympics, the massacres at Lod and Fiumicino airports, the massacre of elderly Israelis at Park Hotel in Netanya, kidnappings, numerous suicide attacks during the Second Intifada, and the launching of missiles from Gaza. Frankly, it’s strange that terrorism has never been considered an element capable of damaging the negotiation based on the premise of "two states for two peoples".
Now Trump is working on it. Europe is missing… No sign of action, even if the funding it gives to the Palestinians isn’t far behind that of the United States.
Translation by Amy Rosenthal