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Palestinians Are Rewarding Terrorists. The U.S. Should Stop Enabling Them
(Washington Post) Thane Rosenbaum - Without apology or shame, yet in conflict with the Oslo Accords and professed aspirations for peace, the Palestinian Authority is running a bounty system. Payments to terrorists and their families are enshrined in Palestinian law, provided for in the PA budget and indirectly supported by foreign aid. Palestinians and Israeli Arabs who are convicted of attacks in Israel are entitled to monthly "salaries" commencing with their arrest (and continuing for life for men who serve at least five years and women who serve at least two), along with additional cash grants and priority civil-service job placements upon their release. The longer a prison sentence - really, the more deadly an attack - the more profitable the payout. But incentivizing the murder of civilians is barbarism. The "lone wolves" who perpetrate stabbings, shootings and car-rammings are not really acting alone - they are a people's army recruited to kill by their government. Instilling a profit motive for terror is not a reassuring sign that West Bank Palestinians are ready for neighborly peace. Congress is considering the Taylor Force Act, named for a West Point graduate and Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who was in Israel last March when a Palestinian attacked a crowd with a knife. The act would effectively cut U.S. aid in half unless the PA abandoned its payments to terrorists. Palestinians don't have to be saints; they just can't be assassins. Abolishing the incentives for killing Israelis is a moral necessity. The writer directs the Forum on Law, Culture & Society at the New York University School of Law.