Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Palestine will not accept US foreign aid after Thursday for fear of potential US legal consequences per Congress’ Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA) of 2018.

The US currently provides nearly $60 million in security funding to the Palestinian government each year. Though the aid is needed, Abbas says the cost of litigation would likely be far greater as it almost was in the 2016 case, Waldman v. PLO.

The ATCA is set to take effect on February 1. It aims to protect and assist American victims of international terrorism but would have been largely ineffective without Section 4. That section is the likely result of the court’s decision in Waldman, where it determined that the PLO would have been required to pay $655.5 million if US courts had jurisdiction over the foreign entity. Thus, Section 4 says that a person consents to personal jurisdiction in US courts if he/she accepts certain US foreign aids, such as economic support funds and international narcotics control and law enforcement aid. Palestinians, therefore, could be sued in US courts if the government continues to accept security aid.

Congress must amend ATCA by Thursday or keep it from taking effect on Friday if it wishes to continue providing aid to Palestine.