Jerusalem: Palestinian officials denounced the Trump administration’s cancellation of more than $US200 ($280 million) million in aid, accusing Washington of “weaponising” humanitarian assistance by using it as a tool to coerce political concessions.
The aid cut, announced on Friday, was the latest in a series of measures apparently aimed at forcing the Palestinian leadership to return to the negotiating table with Israel while US officials work on a long-awaited peace proposal, the details of which remain opaque.
An earlier freeze by Washington of tens of millions of dollars of funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency, which assists Palestinian refugees, and the move in May of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv, Israel, to the contested city of Jerusalem, had already infuriated the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Palestinians, who claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state, expressed defiance this weekend, blaming the Trump administration for forsaking the role its predecessors had long sought as an honest broker in the dispute with Israel.
“This administration is dismantling decades of US vision and engagement in Palestine,” Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s general delegation to the United States, said in a statement.
Read the article by Isabel Kershner in The Sydney Morning Herald (from The New York Times).