Escalating the conflict in the Middle East, American President Donald Trump has declared that if Palestine doesn’t recommence its peace talk with Israel then the US will cut the funding to Palestine.
The president’s comments came after the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said during a media conference the US would cut funds to UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees unless the Palestinian Authority went back to the negotiating table.
These actions are followed up to US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, something which International community views as an action which can only worsen the already broken relationship between Palestine and Israel.
In a pair of tweets, he said the US paid “the Palestinians HUNDRED [sic] 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.”
He added: “We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”
As ever, quite what Trump had in mind was left vague by his tweets, but one key Palestinian recipient of US funding is the Palestinian Authority’s security forces which cooperate with their counterparts in Israel. US funding for the Palestinians is $260m, with an additional $50m used to support Palestinian security services.
The remarks by Haley and Trump come before a planned visit to Jerusalem by the US vice-president, Mike Pence, next week – which was cancelled in December – and which looks increasingly less likely.
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