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The PA Has Only Itself to Blame

(Foreign Affairs) Elliot Abrams and Sander R. Gerber - In response to the article "The Palestinian Authority Is Collapsing" (July 17, 2024), although the authors are right to raise the crucial issue of the dysfunction and inefficacy of the Palestinian Authority, they are wrong to attribute the PA's failings to Israel. The authors cite the PA's financial troubles. What they neglect to mention, however, is that in 2018, the last year that the PA made its budget public, $350 million - 7% of the total - was reserved to pay terrorists who killed or injured civilians in Israel or members of the IDF, and to pay the families of those terrorists. While civil servants are suffering with 50% salary cuts, the authority continues to pay terrorists and their families 100% of their stipends. According to Palestinian Authority law, the PA is required to employ any males who have served at least ten years and females who have served at least five years in Israeli prison, at salaries no less than the monthly "pay for slay" stipends they received in prison. The PA has created a perverse system that incentivizes violence and hatred, breeding a bureaucracy of malfeasance and depravity. Before condemning Israel for "degrading" the PA, one must acknowledge that the PA has degraded itself. Before calling on countries, international institutions, and donor organizations to rally around the impoverished authority, one must recognize that the PA uses its resources to prioritize the murder of Israelis over basic governance. The PA's financial condition is a product of an immoral system that it - and it alone - has created. Elliot Abrams is a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Sander R. Gerber is a Managing Partner, CEO, and Chief Investment Officer at Hudson Bay Capital.
2024-08-08 00:00:00
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