Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) on Wednesday told the Jerusalem Post that existing U.S. law is sufficient to curtail assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA) should a government emerge drawing ministers from both the rival Palestinian Fatah and Hamas factions, as reportedly envisioned by a recently-announced unity agreement between the two groups:
“I don’t believe legislation is necessary,” Engel said, noting that existing legislation triggers a cut in aid. “That’s law.”
“Somehow the Palestinian Authority seems to have this attitude that we are somehow obligated to keep them afloat,” he added. “Surely he [Abbas] can’t think that we can just disregard something that’s so basic and fundamental to our policy.”
U.S. legislation stretching back to 2006 is explicit that any government that includes Hamas is ineligible for U.S. funds, and news of the Fatah-Hamas agreement was quickly described by Al Monitor as potentially the “last straw for Congress on U.S. aid to [the] Palestinians.”
The House will hold hearings Thursday to examine the status of the deal and evaluate its likely consequences. The debate on the Hill comes as the European Union is moving forward on its own investigation into what seems to be endemic Palestinian corruption and mismanagement of E.U. funds.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) on Tuesday rounded up developments that have emerged since last December, when the European Court of Auditors found that some of the billions of Euros given to the Palestinians since the mid-1990s had been allocated in ways that violated restrictions and conditions on that assistance.
The JTA indicated that “a lingering corruption problem that has plagued the [PA] since it was formed under Yasser Arafat” has now become the target of “an unprecedented degree of scrutiny” from E.U. officials:
“Until now, EU aid was unconditional,” said Guy Bechor, an Israeli expert on the Arab world and a former lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “Now, for the first time, we are seeing serious moves for conditionality and transparency.”
The Palestinian economy would collapse in the absence of significant outside assistance.
[Photo: Engel2161 / YouTube]