Trump threatens to stop funding Palestinians, and we know what you're thinking

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives January 3, 2018

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I am not an isolationist and I'm not against foreign aid, at least not as some sort of unbending ideological doctrine. Allies in this world are valuable, and I don't the idea of investing in friendly nations and friendly regimes who can help us to secure our interests around the world. Foreign aid is not a significant percentage of the federal budget, so it's not the reason for the deficit or anything like that. It can make sense to do it.

Giving foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority has always been insane

But giving foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority has always been insane, and it's been a long-running fiasco of bipartisan insanity. The PA is a terrorist organization whose sole purpose is to destroy one of our most important allies. If not for that objective, the PA would have no reason to exist, and would not exist. It's leaders are corrupt liars whose incompetence may be the one saving grace of those around them. The Palestinian population is blinded by complately irrational hatred and rage toward one country, and that is pretty much their national identity. So why was the United States ever giving the Palestinians money? Mainly to keep alive the quixotic quest for a "peace agreement" between the Palestinians and the country the Palestinians refuse to accept the existence of. That was never going to work, and it's hard to believe a succession of presidents really didn't understand that. But either out of diplomatic inertia or out of fear of what might happen if the status quo changed, administration after administration kept cutting the checks. It looks like there's finally a chance that's going to stop:

...peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

If this sounds like a negotiating ploy to get the Palestinians back to the table, it might be that under ordinary circumstances. But in this case neither the circumstances nor the people involved are ordinary. The Palestinians announced before Christmas that they won't consider any peace proposal offered by the United States expressly because Trump decided to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which is absurd because in practice Jerusalem has been Israel's capital for a long time and everyone knows it. Yet the Palestinians are so entrenched in their destroy-Israel stance that even a reasonable move like that brings forth their rage. I'm having a hard time seeing Mahmoud Abbas coming back to the table with his tail between his legs to keep the funding coming from the U.S. But even if he does, why should we take him seriously as a negotiating partner? The Palestinians have had more than enough opportunities to negotiate real peace and a two-state solution in exchange for simply acknowledging that Israel has a right to exist. Time and time again they have refused to do that, and the refusal has usually been followed by new fatwas calling for the death of Israelis via terrorist attacks. The Palestinians are not our friends. It does not do us or anyone else any good by propping them up. Under no circumstances should they receive any money from us. Nothing bad will happen if we stop paying it to them. The media and the Democrats will claim that we're "provoking" them if we withhold their money, but it's the Palestinians who choose violence and it's not our job to keep them happy so they won't. When Trump threatened to cut funding to the United Nations, he actually meant it and he followed through. Hopefully he will do the same here. I can't think of a single reason he should do otherwise.