Israelis, Palestinians critical of funding threat

PLO officials accuse Trump of ‘blackmail’ after he tweets U.S. might cut refugee aid

JERUSALEM— The Trump administration’s threat to cut aid to the Palestinians to force them into a peace deal may have dire humanitarian consequences that could backfire on Israel, Israeli security officials and analysts warned Wednesday, while Palestinians slammed it as blackmail.

The U.S. pays “the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect,” Trump tweeted Tuesday evening.

“With the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make these massive future payments to them.”

Earlier in the day, Trump’s envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, suggested the United States will cut funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency, the agency tasked with assisting Palestinian refugees, until the Palestinian leadership returns to the negotiating table. The United States is UNWRA’s biggest donor and gave it more than $360 million (U.S.) last year, 40 per cent of the organization’s budget.

Palestinian officials reacted furiously to what they interpreted as an attempt by the United States to give up their claims to Jerusalem in return for continued financial aid.

“Palestinian rights are not for sale,” said Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee.

“By recognizing Occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Donald Trump has not only violated international law, but he has also single-handedly destroyed the very foundations of peace and condoned Israel’s illegal annexation of the city. We will not be blackmailed.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said last month Trump had disqualified the U.S. from a role brokering a peace process by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and saying he would move the U.S. Embassy there.

The move was taken by Palestinian officials as a clear indication of U.S. bias toward Israel and a rejection of Palestinian claims to the city, even though Trump said at the time that it should not be read as a position on the city’s final status.

“Cutting funding would not bring anything good to the situation,” said an Israeli security official speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.

“Doing this would end up making the Palestinian leadership even weaker. Then there really would be no one to talk to or rely upon.” UNWRA runs schools and educational programs that Israeli defence officials see as an important counterbalance to Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for the past decade, while the organization also provides essential primary health care and other services for Palestinians.

“Traditionally, the Israeli defence establishment has resisted pressure by Israeli hawks who want to shut down UNWRA funding,” said Ofer Zalzberg, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

“They say if it’s not UNWRA, then education will be provided by Hamas.”

UNWRA runs 700 schools for Palestinians across the region, nearly 150 primary health clinics and employs more than 30,000 teaching staff, doctors, nurses, social workers, sanitation labourers and engineers.

Trump’s tweet is “perceived as deeply offensive,” Zalzberg said. “It’s been taken to say ‘we will pay you to make a concession on Jerusalem.’ ”

“Jerusalem and its holy sites are not for sale, not with gold, nor with silver,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for Abbas.

He said the Palestinian leadership is not opposed to returning to negotiations, but they need to have Arab and international legitimacy with negotiations based on a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital.

Abbas’s Palestinian Authority coordinates with Israel on security, but the already weak leader has been further undermined by Trump’s Jerusalem decision, with nothing to show for decades of negotiations.

Tayseer Nasrallah, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council in Nablus, described the threat as “complete madness and blackmail by the United States to exert pressure on us to give up our national rights.”