RUTHFULLY YOURS

Americans have become accustomed to each new presidential administration trying its hand at forcing a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Repeating the same mistakes, administration in administration out, the latest effort marks several steps backwards in strategy and tactics.

For more than twenty years, the U.S. and Europe have tried to bribe the Palestinians into making peace with Israel. It’s been clear that this approach does nothing more than drain the coffers of the West, while fueling conventional and unconventional belligerence from the Palestinians.

On May 26, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced a $4 billion economic development aid proposal to the West Bank Palestinians: “International business leaders rallied by former prime minister Tony Blair of Britain will propose new agricultural, construction, and other investments to the Palestinian Authority that could increase the Palestinian gross domestic product by 50 percent over three years,” Kerry said.

Facing sequestration, the Obama administration enlisted the World Bank as part of its current effort to gain a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement. Mahmoud Abbas and the PA would make most of these funds. They will go the way the countless billions in aid they have received since 1973, i.e. to the pockets of the leadership, their families and friends, to buy enemies and sponsor physical attacks, spreading worldwide anti-Israeli, virulent anti-Semitic propaganda and campaigns, and “popular resistance”–throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks to kill Israelis and setting fire to Israeli neighborhoods, just as al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine recommends.

The Palestinians’ track record clearly shows that “peace with Israel” is not on their agenda. They have never followed any of the many agreements they have signed with Israel, or for that matter, with the international donor community. Incredibly, the PA is never held accountable for violence or corruption that has swallowed most of the international aid they were handed over the years. Instead of sanctions that could force the Palestinians to stop their violence, the PA is constantly rewarded with steadily growing aid packages.

Mohamed Mustafa, chairman of the PLO’s Palestine Investment Fund–a supposedly independent investment company that was established in 2003 to strengthen the Palestinian economy through strategic investments, said that Kerry was wrong to believe that the Palestinian Authority would make political concessions in return for money. He  said that “any economic plan should be part of a political framework that would ensure a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, including east Jerusalem, and guarantee the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees to their former homes inside Israel.”

At the same time, Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas is calling for Arab Spring “popular activism” (recall Libya and Egypt). Abbas, whose credentials as an instigator have been underestimated in the U.S. (he’s a graduate of the infamous Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow), has no intentions to stop the violence against Israel.  Like his predecessor and comrade to arms and partner to the PLO leadership from its inception, Abbas has been constantly encouraging, in Arabic, all forms of violence against Israel, while telling the U.S. and the West in English that the Palestinians are peace loving people. It’s time to call his bluff and reject his  attempts to redefine violence in any form.

A new report from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center shows how Abbas encourages the perpetration of steady low-level violence in the West Bank as part of his effort to stay in power. His calls for on-going “low-level” violence help him and the PLO to compete for Palestinian violence with the U.S.-designated terrorist Hamas organization.

Congress should inquire why this Administration is set on rewarding this violent group that also threatens the political stability of Jordan. Considering the bloody results of U.S. “tacit” support to other allegedly popular resistance movement in the region, such as the “reform” minded Muslim Brotherhood, it’s time we stop funding any violence advocating group, first and foremost with the PA. Additional U.S. support would only fuel more of the same. It’s time to acknowledge what the Palestinians have been telling us all along; they will not budge an inch unless they can –as the map hanging in Abbas’ office – and Arafat before him — shows, take over the Jewish state.

Dr. Ehrenfeld is the Director of the New York-based American Center for Democracy and author of Funding Evil; How Terrorism is Financed – and How to Stop it.