Anthony Cordesman pithily explains the Congress's determination to defud the Palestinian Authority if it continues to pursue its goals at the UN:
The problem you really have here is that this kind of symbolism doesn’t do Israel any good. All it does is create more potential for some kind of Palestinian rioting or protest and convince more people in the Arab world that they can’t work with Israel, the United States, and the peace process. It’s one thing to talk about aid in the time of Arafat, where you never quite knew where the money went, but the aid today basically maintains a relatively stable West Bank. And when you cut it, you raise the risk of some kind of protest or violence; you lose leverage; and you undermine the P.A., which has enough problems in dealing with groups like Hamas, which still is a threat politically in the West Bank.
I suspect AIPAC desperately needs to undercut Abbas and Fayyad, so they can go back to defending the settlements, because there is no viable interlocutor. Matt Duss comments:
This episode really shows how successful the Israeli right and their American allies have been at cultivating anti-Palestinian attitudes in Congress. So successful, in fact, that not even pleas from Bibi Netanyahu himself can deter Congress from punishing the Palestinians. Perhaps more importantly, though, it also gets at the fact that being "pro-Israel" these days has less to do with supporting policies that actually enhance the security of Israel, and more with signaling a post-9/11 brand of hawkish American ultra-nationalism.
The Dish 