President Biden has pledged to restore aid to the PA as incentive to return to negotiations with Israel. A recent article by the American Center for Law and Justice (AJLC) suggests that such aid may violate the Taylor Force Act (TFA). This important article was co-written by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, JINSA and JCPA Fellow Sander Gerber, and Stuart Force, father of Captain Taylor Force.

The three authors make the point that the obstacle to peace is not any lack of aid or assistance, but the PA’s insistence on incentivizing terrorism. The Taylor Force Act has bipartisan support, and blocks funding to the PA until such time as it ends the pay-for-slay stipends to jailed terrorists and their families. The act was named for Taylor Force, a graduate of West Point and a US Army veteran who was stabbed to death while in Tel Aviv visiting on a school trip. Force was not Jewish, and not Israeli, and yet his murder was celebrated by the PA, and his murderer deemed a “heroic martyr.” The murderer’s family receives regular benefits from the PA for this “service” to the Arab people.

In restoring aid to the PA, the Biden Administration is doing nothing more than aiding and abetting terror and spitting on the memory of Taylor Force. In attempting to get around the TFA, moreover, the Biden Administration will be guilty of money-laundering for terrorists. The better course, argue the authors of this important editorial, is to focus on reforming the PA as a governing body, rather than enabling PA-sponsored terror, which is the reason for the Taylor Force Act in the first place.