Time for U.S. to stop funding terrorists
At what point does a foreign government include elements that are so flagrantly genocidal that the United States can no longer send it financial aid? How often and wantonly does it have to violate its own signed commitments before the U.S. administration decides it can no longer “work with” it?
These questions were put to the test this month, when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced the formation of a Hamas-supported unity government. For the first time since Hamas violently overthrew the authority’s rule in Gaza in 2007, the Palestinian government will have the backing and formal collaboration of an active terrorist group.
What is Hamas? It is one of the worst terror organizations the world has seen. Founded in 1987 and dedicated by its charter to the destruction of Israel, the murder of Jews and the imposition of Islam in “every inch of Palestine,” Hamas launched wave after wave of suicide bombings in the 1990s, blowing up Israeli buses (including school buses) and restaurants, murdering hundreds of civilians, and building schools to train children to become killers. Hamas turned suicidal terror into an industry and a multigenerational tradition.
That’s why Hamas has long been classified as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department — as well as the European Union and a host of countries around the world.
Hamas is also, it is important to note, a vital component of Iran’s ongoing war against the United States and the West. Although it started as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas quickly came under Tehran’s wing and became the Palestinian version of Lebanon’s Hezbollah: The two groups were the first of the major jihadist terror outfits, funded and trained by the Iranians to intimidate the West by butchering our children.
Hamas has never repented, softened or moderated in any way. After the Israeli security fence made it much harder to get suicide bombers to their targets, Hamas started launching rockets from Gaza into Israeli towns. And its genocidal aims are frequently reiterated by senior Hamas leaders. Just a few weeks ago, Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, proclaimed that no unity deal would prevent the organization from continuing its efforts to eradicate Israel.
Hamas has made clear that it will not give up its military capabilities under the new government. Instead, it will follow what one Hamas source described as the “Hezbollah model,” retaining its whole arsenal as well as its fighting force — with the implicit aim of eventually achieving political dominance over the entire Palestinian Authority. Today Hamas has at least 10,000 rockets, mostly supplied by Iran, aimed at Israeli population centers. In addition, the organization’s domestic weapons production capacity is growing rapidly in both scope and sophistication. Hamas has close to 20,000 active fighters.
The dangers posed by Hamas maintaining its military are enormous. In Lebanon, the national flag is rarely seen in Hezbollah-controlled areas, and the Lebanese government has become an ineffectual fig leaf, allowing Hezbollah to launch war at Israel and send fighters to prop up Iran’s puppet in Syria, Bashar Assad. The new Palestinian government will similarly be a cover for Hamas terror, unable to govern effectively or take responsibility for the territories it controls.
It will also make it impossible for the peace process to continue. The Palestinian Authority argues that unity is a prerequisite to peace. This assumes, however, that the authority can strong-arm Hamas into giving up on its goal of destroying Israel. If Hamas retains an independent military, this will never go beyond wishful thinking. Although Israel remains eager and willing to negotiate for peace, it simply cannot be expected to engage with a government that endorses an armed terrorist entity actively working toward Israel’s destruction. This should be self-evident — and, according to a recent poll, it is evident to fully two-thirds of the American people.
The failure to make Hamas lay down its weapons also constitutes a grave breach of the commitments signed by the Palestinian Authority. In 1995, the Israelis and the Palestinians signed the Oslo II Accords, which stipulate that no group or organization operating in the West Bank or Gaza, other than the official Palestinian police, may manufacture, import or possess any firearms, ammunition, weapons, explosives or other related equipment. The agreements that followed reiterated this principle. The 1999 Wye River Memorandum committed the Palestinian government to stopping any illegal weapons production or possession.
The agreement also poses a serious problem for the continuation of American aid to the Palestinians. Each year, the United States sends $500 million to the Palestinian Authority. According to U.S. law, such aid must be cut off if the Palestinians form a government over which “Hamas exercises undue influence”— a fact the Palestinians have tried to circumvent by forming a “technocratic” government, in which none of the ministers are formally part of Hamas, although they do its bidding. It is a transparent trick meant to keep the dollars coming.
Shockingly, the Obama administration seems to be buying it. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki announced June 2 that the U.S. would “work with” the new government. Secretary of State John Kerry said that while the United States sees Hamas as a terror group, it will nonetheless “monitor” the situation rather than cut off funding. This leaves our Israeli allies out on a limb, and it flies in the face of months of assurances by administration officials that they would never work with such a government unless Hamas recognized Israel, renounced violence and accepted previous agreements — none of which is remotely in the offing.
Foreign policy experts already have called on Congress to take further action to prevent aid to the Palestinians, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are taking the issue seriously. Until the Palestinian Authority proves it is able to govern effectively and moves to disarm all terror groups in their territory, including Hamas — as they have repeatedly obligated themselves to do — they should not receive one dime of American taxpayer money.
How bad does a government have to be before the United States stops working with it? If its embrace of the new Abbas-Hamas regime is any indicator, it has to be a lot worse than most of us want to imagine.
Shelley Berkley represented Southern Nevada in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1999 to 2013. She is a member of the board of directors of The Israel Project.