Biden’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Policy Regarding Terror

The PFLP is not some outcast, extremist group. It is the second-largest faction in the Palestinian Authority, which has received more than $10 billion in U.S. aid since 1993. Currently, the Biden administration is paying many of the P.A.’s bills by sending $600 million to non-P.A. agencies, which then pay various expenses that the authority would otherwise have to pay.

The PFLP has also been part of the P.A.’s parent body—the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—since the founding of the PLO in 1964.

When Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords in 1993-95, he agreed to disarm and outlaw terrorist groups. But he never disarmed or outlawed the PFLP.

When Mahmoud Abbas succeeded Arafat as head of the P.A. and the PLO in 2004, he assumed the Oslo obligation to disarm and outlaw the PFLP. Nineteen years later, Abbas still hasn’t lifted a finger against it. He has never sent the P.A.’s American-trained and American-armed security forces to arrest PFLP terrorists or shut down their weapons depots.

The last time that elections were held for the P.A.’s legislative body, the Palestinian Legislative Council, in 2006, the PFLP was allowed to run. It called itself the “Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa List”—Mustafa was general-secretary of the PFLP and responsible for numerous murders. The P.A.’s Central Elections Commission approved the participation of the Mustafa List in that year’s race. It won three seats in Abbas’s putative parliament.

When local elections were held in the P.A.-occupied parts of Judea-Samaria in 2012 and 2017, its Central Elections Commission again had no problem approving the PFLP’s involvement.