President Trump is keeping the Palestinian Authority’s feet to the fire until it resumes direct negotiations with Israel in good faith and ceases using its funds to subsidize Palestinians imprisoned in connection with terrorist acts against Israelis, or the families of jailed or dead terrorists. By contrast, the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden wants to return to the failed policies of the Obama-Biden administration. Biden recently stated that, if elected president, he “will reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem, find a way to re-open the PLO’s diplomatic mission in Washington, and resume the decades-long economic and security assistance efforts to the Palestinians that the Trump Administration stopped.” Biden demands an end to Israeli settlements and opposes annexation of any disputed territories, even if done for purely security reasons.

President Trump signed the Taylor Force Act in 2018. This law prohibits certain economic support assistance that directly benefits the Palestinian Authority (PA) from being made available for the West Bank and Gaza unless certain conditions are met. The Department of State must certify that the PA, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and any successor or affiliated organizations, among other things, have terminated payments for acts of terrorism against U.S. and Israeli citizens to any individual who has been fairly tried and imprisoned for such acts, to any individual who died committing such acts, and to family members of such an individual. Either Biden intends to seek the repeal of the Taylor Force Act or just plans to ignore it, assuming he follows through with his pledge to “resume the decades-long economic and security assistance efforts to the Palestinians that the Trump Administration stopped.”

Although Biden claimed that he would not move the U.S. embassy in Israel back to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, he said the embassy “should not have been moved.” Biden called the move “short-sighted and frivolous,” even though Obama and prior presidents had promised to do the very same thing.

In 1995, while serving in the Senate, Biden voted for the Jerusalem Embassy Act which authorized moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. At that time, then-Senator Biden noted “the continued sham of maintaining our Embassy in Tel Aviv.” He declared, “Regardless of what others may think, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.” Biden added, “Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem will send the right signal, not a destructive signal. To do less would be to play into the hands of those who will try their hardest to deny Israel the full attributes of statehood.”