Trump says he will not give help to Palestinians unless they agree to a peace agreement

In a Rosh Hashanah conference call with religious leaders and Jewish rabbis, President Trump said he would not give Palestinians money until they agreed to a peace deal.

"I have stopped large sums of money that we were paying Palestinians and Palestinian leaders – we were – the United States was paying them huge sums of money," said Mr. Trump on Thursday. "And I would say that you will have money, but we do not pay you until we reach an agreement, if we do not agree, we do not pay."

Last week, the Trump administration officially ended funding for a US agency that is helping more than 5 million registered Palestinian refugees – the State Department announced that it would "no longer commit funds to this operation irrevocably defective ".

The United States has provided nearly 30% of the total budget of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides health care, education and social services to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, from Syria and Lebanon. The Trump administration paid $ 60 million in January, a massive reduction from the $ 364 million paid by the United States in 2017, and retained $ 65 million in additional assistance. "[T]The United States will not make additional contributions to UNRWA, "said the State Department.

In his appeal to Jewish leaders, the president also reiterated the argument he made to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing it as Israel's capital – by removing the status of Jerusalem as a questionable question. advanced the peace process.

"We removed it from the table, and I think it will help a lot in reaching an agreement, as they say, with the Palestinians."

But that was the announcement of the relocation of the Embassy this prompted the Palestinian Authority to interrupt communication with President Trump's peace team in the Middle East, including President Jared Kushner's son-in-law, special envoy Jason Greenblatt, and the United States. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. On May 14, the day of the official opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recalled his ambassador to the United States, Husam Zomlot, to Ramallah, where he remained.

In an interview with CBS News, Zomlot disagreed with the president that interrupted Palestinian aid could serve as a lever for a peace deal. "By arming US humanitarian and financial aid to Palestine to intimidate Palestinians at the negotiating table, Trump has undermined US leadership in an irreparable way … Trying to twist our arm in relation to the US. money is not just amoral, "

He also questioned the president's remark that removing Jerusalem from the table benefits the peace process, retorting, "No one will sit with them if Jerusalem is not squarely on the table. He added that "Trump thinks Jerusalem is a real estate business … Jerusalem is not a real estate property, Jerusalem is for us a national hub and a national identity".

According to reports, President Trump plans to launch his peace plan in the Middle East at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in two weeks. But Ambassador Zomlot points out that "President Trump and his team have completely lost our confidence". He argues that the United States has "fully co-opted the current Israeli government's point of view, so what peace plan is it talking about?" Zomlot confirmed that President Abbas will also participate in the General Assembly, where he will "call for peace" with the help of the international community.

Asked what steps the United States could take to convince the Palestinians to resume peace talks, Zomlot said: "We do not want any progress, and what they are announcing now is going to be deaf. from the level of poison inserted into the body of the already endangered peace process, the only thing they can do is to back down, to return and to adopt the long-standing historical position of the United States . "