The US Capitol building. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday to deliberate over the Taylor Force Act, which would cut US economic aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) if the PA continues to issue payments to terrorists and their families.

Former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams will testify in favor of the legislation, which is named after a US Army veteran killed by a Palestinian terrorist in Jaffa in 2016.

The bill was introduced by a group of Republican lawmakers — Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Dan Coats (Ind.) and Roy Blunt (Mo.) — in September 2016. It would require the US secretary of state to certify that the PA has ended its payments to terrorists and their family members. The bill also calls on the PA to publicly condemn terror attacks and to take steps to bring terrorists to justice.

In mid-June, a group of former Israeli security officials called “Commanders for Israel’s Security” (CIS) asserted that passing the Taylor Force Act would pose the risk of undermining the PA’s security cooperation with Israel. Soon after CIS issued its statement against the legislation, a group of 13 retired security officials responded in an op-ed for the the Jerusalem Post, writing that CIS was “fundamentally mistaken” in its opposition to US efforts to punish the PA for incentivizing terrorism.