Palestinians ‘will not be blackmailed’ by Trump’s aid threat – Official

President Donald Trump’s threat that the U.S. might cut aid to Palestinians has been met with anger, with one Palestinian official accusing the U.S. of “blackmail.”

“We will not be blackmailed,” senior Palestinian official, Hanan Ashrawi, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Ashrawi accused Trump of having “single-handedly destroyed the foundations for peace” by deciding to recognise the disputed city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Israel claims Jerusalem as its “undivided capital,” while the Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for future state.

The shock Dec. 6 declaration sparked waves of protests throughout the world and led the Palestinian side to reject any future role for the U.S. in peace efforts.

In a Tuesday tweet, Trump said the Palestinians are “no longer willing to talk peace.”

“We pay the Palestinians HUNDRED 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 wrote on Twitter.

“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?”

Clashes between demonstrators and Israeli forces in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank have left 13 Palestinians dead since Trump’s Jerusalem declaration.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in the decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

On Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said that his government was strongly disappointed with Trump’s “very big mistake.”

The Jerusalem decision must be reversed or risk “chaos,” Cavusoglu warned.

Envisioned as an area under international mandate when the state of Israel was created, the war of 1948 left the city divided between West Jerusalem, controlled by Israel, and East Jerusalem, controlled by Jordan.

In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured the eastern half of Jerusalem, now home to over 300,000 Palestinians, and later annexed the territory in a move that was not internationally recognised.

Trump said in tweets on Tuesday that the U.S. may withhold future aid payments to Palestinians, accusing them of being “no longer willing to talk peace” with Israel.

The President’s tweets follow plans disclosed by his UN ambassador earlier on Tuesday to stop funding a UN agency that provides humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees.

“The President has basically said he doesn’t want to give any additional funding, or stop funding, until the Palestinians agree to come back to the negotiation table,” Amb. Nikki Haley said when asked about future U.S. funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) .

The U.S. is the largest donor to the agency, with a pledge of nearly 370 million dollars as of 2016, according to UNRWA’s website.

Relations between the Palestinians and Washington soured early on December after Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, generating outrage across the Arab world and concern among Washington’s Western allies.

Weeks later, more than 120 countries defied Trump and voted in favour of a UN General Assembly resolution calling for the U.S. to drop its stance on Jerusalem’s status.

“What we saw with the resolution was not helpful to the situation,” Haley said on Tuesday.

“The Palestinians now have to show to the world that they want to come to the table.

“As of now, they’re not coming to the table but they asked for aid.

“We’re not giving the aid, we’re going to make sure that they come to the table and we want to move forward with the peace process,” she said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called the Trump administration’s decision on Jerusalem the “greatest crime” and a flagrant violation of international law.

Abba said it was unacceptable for the U.S. to have a role in the Middle East peace process because it was biased in favour of Israel.

On Tuesday, the Israeli Parliament passed an amendment that would make it harder for it to cede control over parts of Jerusalem in any peace deal with the Palestinians.