JERUSALEM—While the caretaker government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was busy banning the entry into Israel and Palestine of two members of the United States Congress, a much more serious and enduring danger to the Holy Land looms on the near horizon.

The controversy over the visit by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) is fraught with the kind of short-term tag-team political grandstanding that has characterized the ties between Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Tlaib, of Palestinian descent, and Omar, born in Somalia, are both Muslims. They are also two of the four members of Congress—not coincidentally, all of them women of color—that Trump said should “go back” to the countries they came from and make things better there rather than complain about his version of America.

Now Netanyahu, fighting for reelection in the face of corruption indictments, has stopped these two from entering the country because they support the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, seeing it as a pressure tool in favor of the Palestinians. And apparently because that’s what Trump demanded in a peremptory tweet, calling any such visit “weakness” on the part of his close friend the Israeli premier.

But there is, in fact, a much greater and deeply practical problem facing Israel than the visit of Tlaib and Omar, and a developing crisis that is directly the fault of Trump and the U.S. Congress.

A few weeks ago, amid scorching temperatures and a typically rainless summer, fires broke out across Israel and the West Bank. Local firefighting crews successfully battled to contain the blazes, including, as they’ve done repeatedly in the past, a small detachment from the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Working side-by-side with their Israeli counterparts, the Palestinian Civil Defense crews were later lauded publicly for their assistance: social media videos showed the Israeli and Palestinian firefighters smiling, shaking hands, and posing for pictures. This drew the attention of Trump’s peace envoy, Jason Greenblatt, who on Twitter called the “ongoing cooperation and coordination” between the two sides an “example of what could be when neighbors live in peace. There is so much to gain!”

Yet under the Trump administration U.S. funding for those very same PA Security Forces (PASF) has, since the start of this year, been completely halted. The American-led security mission in Jerusalem that advises, trains, and equips those forces is, according to several sources familiar with the matter, out of money. Programs have been shuttered and personnel sent home. Worse still, efforts in Congress to amend the anti-terrorism bill that initially led to the cut off in aid have stalled amid political jostling between the House and Senate, per two additional sources.

All this, despite widespread recognition that PA security personnel, operating in coordination with Israel, are a boon for stability in the region and Israeli security in particular. The Trump administration, though, seems fixated on unveiling its long-delayed peace plan. Congress endlessly debates the true meaning of being “pro-Israel,” including undue focus on a handful of leftwing representatives like Ohmar and Tlaib who support boycotting Israel (and these days whether they’ll be allowed entry to visit Israel). While the most positive and tangible aspect of the entire Israeli-Palestinian relationship is being left to languish.

The law in question, called the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA), took effect at the start of February. The bill foisted an impossible choice on the PA: accept any U.S. aid and you automatically trigger acceptance of the U.S. court system’s jurisdiction in various terrorism-related civil suits—potentially opening up the PA and its affiliated organizations to hundreds of millions of dollars in liabilities and, effectively, bankruptcy. The Palestinians not surprisingly chose to forgo all American money.

The problem with the law became evident once it was clear the PA wouldn’t budge and that the prime loser would in fact be the PASF. “We’re already not helping the victims [who sued the Palestinian Authority for terrorism damages],” one congressional source said back in January. “Why would we now hurt ourselves and our national interest” by potentially creating a security crisis in Israel?

Despite talk in recent months on Capitol Hill about a readiness to find a “fix” for ATCA, acrimony continued between the bill’s primary sponsor, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, and the State Department, which oversees security assistance to the Palestinians. “Both sides were stuck without a move that can advance them,” says one source familiar with Grassley’s thinking. According to some reports Israeli officials were even lobbying Congress behind-the-scenes to amend the legislation and get funding back on track. Only in June did relations apparently improve enough to begin work on a real solution—which is where partisan infighting took over.

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