United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced yesterday on his Twitter account that “The U.S. is providing more than $360 million of urgent support for the Palestinian people. We will galvanize the international community to make more aid available for humanitarian and development efforts.” [Twitter, May 26, 2021]

The announcement follows the April 7, 2021 decision of United States President Joe Biden to renew US aid to the Palestinians - in the amount of $235 million for the financial year 2021.

Following the announcement of President Biden, a press release issued from the office of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, summed up the PA response:

“Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh welcomed today's announcement by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to resume aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), estimated at $150 million annually, and support for development projects in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, estimated at $75 million, which will come into effect during the last quarter of this year. This is in addition to strengthening the process of law enforcement and justice in occupied Palestine, as all such aid ceased during Trump’s presidency.”  

[Website of PA PM, April 8, 2021]

The lackluster PA response to the dramatic decision to renew the US aid that had been frozen for 3 years, was, to a great extent, because the PA is prevented by several, concurrently relevant, pieces of US legislation from directly benefitting from the aid. 

The prevalent narrative is that US President Donald Trump was responsible for the cessation of US aid to the PA. In reality, US legislation, mostly adopted by the administration of then-President Barack Obama, entrenched limits on the US aid if the PA continued with certain practices - such as the continued implementation of the PA’s ‘Pay-for-Slay’ policy - or adopted new ones - such as initiating and supporting an investigation against Israel launched by the International Criminal Court.

At a conference held by the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, the Director-General and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Sinokrot Global Group and former PA Minister of Economy, Mazen Sinokrot, emphasized that “Palestine needs the American aid”, but bemoaned US legislation that conditions the aid on the PA abolishing its terror reward payments. This condition, according to Sinokrot, is a condition that causes “harm to the Palestinian people’s honor.”