Biden reversing Trump policy, quietly ramping up Palestinian aid

The Biden administration notified Congress of nearly $75 million in new assistance to Palestinians in early April 2021, Fox News reported, alongside a separately announced $15 million public commitment to vulnerable Palestinian groups — moves that unwind Trump-era restrictions without drawing the kind of public rollout that typically accompanies a major foreign-aid announcement.

State Department spokesman Ned Price defended the resumed funding in terms tying it to broader American values rather than a specific policy dispute, saying, "American support for the Palestinian people ... is consistent with our values. It is consistent with our interests," according to Fox News.

What the Trump administration had frozen

The resumed aid reverses a policy dating to August 2018, when the Trump administration blocked nearly all Palestinian assistance following the U.S. embassy's relocation from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Fox News reported. Palestinians lost more than $200 million in support during that freeze, per the outlet's accounting.

Why the low profile

Fox News reported that the administration did not prominently publicize the payments, characterizing the approach as an apparent effort to avoid alarming pro-Israel Americans about the administration's broader Middle East posture. The outlet noted that Biden had separately endorsed the Trump-era Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, pledging to build on that framework even while reversing the aid freeze.

Where the money was going

CNBC reported the same week that the restored assistance broke down into several distinct packages: $75 million in economic and development aid for the West Bank and Gaza, $10 million for peacebuilding programs run through the U.S. Agency for International Development, and $150 million in humanitarian assistance channeled through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA. Per USAID's congressional notification, CNBC reported, a portion of the $75 million was earmarked for short-term projects meant to rebuild U.S.-Palestinian relations, including $5.4 million for Palestinian civic groups — potentially including independent media in the West Bank and Gaza — plus funding for the health-care sector and a resumption of assistance to the East Jerusalem Hospital Network.

Republicans push back

The restoration drew immediate opposition on Capitol Hill. Jewish Insider reported that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, led a letter signed by 18 Republican senators — including Tom Cotton, Todd Young, Marco Rubio, Steve Daines, Susan Collins and Roger Wicker — urging the administration to pause the $75 million in USAID funding, arguing the programs described in USAID's March 26 notification did not fall within the exceptions Congress wrote into the 2018 Taylor Force Act and "likely violate the TFA." Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., separately accused the administration of "support of pay to slay," a reference to Palestinian Authority stipends paid to the families of people convicted of attacks on Israelis, PBS NewsHour reported. The State Department maintained the aid would "fully comply with US law, including the Taylor Force Act."

What it signals

The pairing of a substantive policy reversal with a deliberately quiet rollout points to the administration trying to hold two positions at once: restoring humanitarian and development funding cut under Trump while avoiding a domestic political fight over Middle East policy so early in Biden's term. Continuing to publicly back the Abraham Accords alongside the aid restoration was, per Fox News' framing, part of that balancing act — but the swift, 18-senator pushback over Taylor Force Act compliance showed the administration could not avoid the fight entirely, even while trying to keep the announcement itself low-key.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by Fox News, CNBC, PBS NewsHour and Jewish Insider. It restores a story originally published on this site in April 2021; figures are as reported at the time.