The Trump administration froze funding for the Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF), a group that purportedly aims to crack down on terrorism in the West Bank but employs terrorists who have carried out attacks on Israelis.
The move, part of the administration's broader global aid freeze, comes as the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, jockey for control of post-war Gaza. The Biden administration pushed to make the PASF a central player in its future plans for the war-torn strip, showering it with tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer cash even as it acknowledged that the aid could boost Hamas. Some of that money, issued just before the administration left power, allowed the PASF to conduct "firearms and ammunition" training, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The Washington Post, which first reported the funding freeze, described the PASF as "the linchpin to the Palestinian Authority's ability to maintain law and order" in both Gaza and the West Bank. The outlet did not mention the scores of attacks off-duty members of the forces have carried out against both Israeli soldiers and civilians.
An investigation released last year by the watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch documented at least 55 such attacks since 2020. In February 2024, for example, a first lieutenant in the PASF opened fire on Israeli troops at a checkpoint near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Another member of the forces, Capt. Ahmed Abdullah Abu Shalal, was a terrorist leader with the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an internationally designated terror group. He was killed in an Israeli airstrike after carrying out an April 2023 shooting in East Jerusalem that wounded two Israeli civilians.
Before the freeze, Abbas reportedly sought more than $680 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to "ramp up security operations" in the West Bank and Gaza. The request came in mid-December, after President Donald Trump won the presidency but before his inauguration. His administration appears increasingly unlikely to grant it.
In Israel, Trump’s decision to halt the PASF’s funding drew applause.
"For years, it has been widely acknowledged that the Palestinian Authority educates, glorifies, and finances terrorism," said Meir Deutsch, director of the Regavim movement, a group that has monitored the PASF’s ties to terrorism. "Over the past three years alone, numerous police officers and officials within the Palestinian Authority's security forces have been directly involved in lethal attacks against Israeli civilians."
Trump, Deutsch said, recognizes "the true nature of the Palestinian Authority, which shares the same ambitions and objectives as Hamas."
United States aid to the PASF was also frozen during Trump’s first term in office, though certain training programs remained in place.
When the Biden administration doled out $3 million to the PASF in early January, it hoped to prepare the fighting force to assume control in Gaza. The cash infusion drew concerns in both Israel and the United States, primarily due to the PASF’s deep and longstanding ties to terrorism.
"The PASF have demonstrated an ongoing inability to maintain order in the West Bank, a fact made more concerning by emerging reports of the group’s ties to terrorism in the region," Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Free Beacon at the time. "As everyone knows, money is fungible."
Reports from Palestinian Media Watch indicate that more than 60 percent "of the number of Martyrs in the West Bank" are affiliated with the Palestinian Fatah movement, which sponsors the PASF. "Most of them are members of the [Palestinian Authority] Security Forces or their sons," one investigation found. And nearly 400 Palestinians imprisoned for terrorism are known PASF members.