The Palestinian Authority will receive some $200 million in frozen US aid dollars after top House Republican Ileana Ros-Letinen ended her brief hold on the money.

Some view Jerusalem’s silence on the matter, on the heels of Jerusalem freezing tax revenues to the PA, as reason enough to question the US administration’s assertion that the resumption of funds is in line with Israeli interests.

Many nationalist politicians in Israel say the Obama administration is using its promised veto of the PA bid at the UN Security Council to leverage Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into not pursuing Israel’s true interests. The implied threat of not following through with the promised veto, they say, is effectively ‘holding a gun’ to Israel’s head. 

Ros-Lehtinen had blocked the funds in late August – shortly before PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas submitted his application for statehood recognition based on pre-1967 lines to the UN Security Council the following month.

Another question being asked is why hearings were not convened to examine the veracity of claims that US national security interests are genuinely served by funding the PLO – which uses US monies to pay pensions to terrorists in Israeli prisons and grants to released terrorists.