European Commission Places Toothless Conditions on Aid to Palestinian Authority

The European Commission has announced that it will give $435 million to the Palestinian Authority. It is maddening that the EU did not put make the continuing scandal of the PA’s aid to “martyrs” – the Palestinians killed, or imprisoned, after taking part in murderous terrorist attacks on Israelis – at the center of its demands.

The PA now spends more than $350 million a year on its “Pay-For-Slay” Program. By comparison, the PA spends only $220 million a year on all of its other welfare programs. “Pay-For-Slay” both encourages, and rewards, terrorist murderers. The EU could have demanded that the program be completely halted before the $435 million in new aid would be transferred. Instead, it simply called for an end to that program, without linking that halt to the receipt of more aid. After all, the EU knows perfectly well that Mahmoud Abbas, who has repeatedly insisted that he would support the “Pay-For-Slay” program “with my last penny,” would have simply refused the demand to shut it down, and then the EU would be compelled to withhold that aid, something that Ursula von der Leyen and her colleagues at the EU are simply not going to do. So they’ve chosen not to make their aid contingent on an end to the “Pay-For-Slay” program, but merely appealed to Abbas to end it, knowing he won’t do that and hoping that no one makes a fuss about their failure to hold Mahmoud “Slip-Slidin’ Away” Abbas to account for not ending the program.

We know how Mahmoud Abbas deals with those Palestinian critics who complain of his corrupt ways if they prove to be garnering too much support. He simply has them killed, as he did with the late Nizar Banat, who criticized his corruption and for his pains was beaten to death by Abbas’ goons. “EU Pledges $435 Million to Ailing Palestinian Authority — With Conditions for Reform,” by Jacob Frankel, Algemeiner, July 19, 2024:

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, hailed the cash infusion as an important step toward a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the Israel-Hamas War in Gaza concludes.

“Israelis, Palestinians, and the entire region deserve peace, security, and stability. With this joint strategy, we are supporting the Palestinian Authority’s reform efforts,” she said in a statement. “Together, we are laying the groundwork for economic and political stability in the West Bank.”…

No, Ms. von der Leyen, you are not supporting the PA’s “reform efforts,” because you have not provided an enforcement mechanism. You do not insist that Abbas himself should disgorge his hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from previous aid packages. You do not insist that new elections be held at once, though you are well aware that 80% of the Palestinians in the West Bank want Abbas to be sent packing. You want the “Pay-For-Slay” program to end, but you do not do the only thing that might bring that about: withholding every bit of the $435 million aid package just announced by the EU.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) applauded the EU’s decision to attach conditions to PA funding.

“We welcome today’s significant announcement by the EU to, for the first time, tie all funding to the Palestinian Authority on its ‘progress towards the agreed-upon reform milestones,’” the group wrote on X/Twitter. “Urgent reforms include stopping salaries to terrorists and ending antisemitic incitement in PA textbooks.”

I do not share the enthusiasm of the AJC for this EU linking of $435 million in aid to the PA to changes in its “educational curriculum,” an end to corruption, and the need for mandatory retirement to be put in place. The EU money has already started to flow, and all of it will be disbursed to the PA by the end of September. How in the world can the PA manage by then to revise its “educational curriculum,” which means mainly to strip its textbooks of the squalid omnipresent antisemitism? We have had endless promises from the PA before to “clean up the textbooks” (the PA never specifies “cleaned of what”), never fulfilled, and yet the donors keep providing money. I have no doubt in this case, too, the PA will make a promise about reforming the “educational curriculum” that will involve a few cosmetic changes, but in the texts will essentially remain. Abbas will, with a great flourish, announce his intention to hold new elections “sometime in the future,” and he will declare his intention to “root out corruption” while still holding onto his family’s $400 million fortune, and will discharge a handful of the upper political echelon whom he can afford to get rid of because they have been less loyal to him than have others.

Does anyone really think that the “corruption” in the PA will stop? The EU threat is toothless. The PA will pocket the $435 million and continue its corrupt and antisemitic ways.

In fact, Mahmoud Abbas was so pleased at the announcement of the EU aid, and the toothless “conditions” imposed by the EU, that just a few days later, he felt emboldened enough to declare that the PA would now join the terror group Hamas in a government of “national unity.”

There will be no massive reform of the PA. The EU will pay up the $435 million, cash on the barrelhead, and for Mahmoud Abbas, it will be promises promises, but no real change.