Trump threat angers Palestine
PRESIDENT’S TWEET ABOUT CUT IS ‘BLACKMAIL’ Former peace negotiator warns of the dangers in cutting off financial assistance.
Palestinians condemned as blackmail US President Donald Trump’s threat to withhold future aid payments over what he called the Palestinians’ unwillingness to talk peace with Israel.
Trump drew praise from a Cabinet minister in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government but a warning from a former Israeli peace negotiator of the dangers in cutting off financial assistance to the Palestinians.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that Washington gives Palestinians “Hundreds of millions of dollars” a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel ... with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said in response: “We will not be blackmailed.”
Palestinian anger at Trump is already high over his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a declaration that also generated outrage across the Arab world.
Commenting on Trump’s tweets, Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said: “Jerusalem is not for sale, neither for gold nor for silver.”
Abu Rdainah said the Palestinians were not opposed to returning to peace talks that collapsed in 2014, but only on the basis of establishing a state of their own along the lines that existed before Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 war.
“If the United States is keen about peace and about its interests it must abide by that,” he said.
Israel, which withdrew troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, has called the pre-1967 war West Bank boundaries indefensible.
A report prepared for the US Congress in December 2016, said annual US economic support to the West Bank and Gaza Strip has averaged about $400 million (R4.9 billion) since 2008.
The money has gone towards US Agency for International Development projects and towards budget support for the Palestinian Authority, which administers limited self-rule in the Palestinian territories under interim peace agreements. –