WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week, America First Legal opened a Freedom of Information Act investigation of the U.S. State Department’s Palestinian Affairs Unit’s activities in Israel’s capital city Jerusalem, the “West Bank”, and Gaza. 

On a bipartisan basis, Congress has passed multiple laws prohibiting the Biden Administration from using U.S. taxpayer dollars to directly benefit the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and/or to undermine Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. 

However, the State Department admitted that the Biden Administration has transferred over half a billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars to directly benefit the Palestinian Authority and its related non-governmental organizations since January 20, 2021. It further admitted that the Palestinian Affairs Unit’s “Public Diplomacy Section” is working with unnamed “Palestinian and American organizations” to support undisclosed “projects” in Jerusalem, the State of Israel’s U.S.-recognized capital city, the “West Bank”, and in Hamas-ruled Gaza to “increase exchange” and “advance shared goals”. The specified “shared goals” include “education, entrepreneurship, environmental protection, English language learning, science and technology, art and culture, gender equality, human rights, and democracy”. They do not include peace with Israel, ending the Palestinians’ eliminationist anti-Semitic incitement, or stopping terrorism. 

AFL will continue working to expose the Biden Administration’s intentional and systematic violation of U.S. laws.

Read the FOIA here.

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