JERUSALEM — If President Trump’s goal with a pair of tweets threatening to cut their funding was to compel Palestinians, one way or another, to return to peace negotiations, they appear to have had the opposite effect — and left many Israelis confused and worried as well.
“We pay the Palestinians HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect,’’ Trump wrote on Twitter, while most of the Middle East was sleeping Wednesday. “With the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace,’’ he added, “why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?’’
Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last month, upending decades of US policy that had long avoided prejudging future negotiations over the city and prompting the Palestinians to declare that the administration no longer had a role to play in the peace talks.
The tweets, on a day Trump also took jabs at Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan, echoed remarks made hours earlier by Nikki Haley, his ambassador to the United Nations. Haley threatened that the United States would stop providing financial support to the UN Relief and Works Agency, which assists Palestinian refugees throughout the region, unless the Palestinians return to the negotiating table.
As the largest donor to the relief agency, the United States provided more than $355 million in support for its 2016 operations, including $95 million for a West Bank and Gaza emergency appeal. Washington also provided about $290 million last year to the Palestinians through the US Agency for International Development and has provided about $5.2 billion in total since 1994.
“We will not be blackmailed,’’ Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian official, said in a statement Wednesday. “President Trump has sabotaged our search for peace, freedom, and justice. Now he dares to blame the Palestinians for the consequences of his own irresponsible actions!’’
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, was also angry. “Jerusalem and its holy places are not for sale,’’ he said, “not with gold nor with silver.’’
For Israelis, too, Trump’s tweets were left open to some feverish interpretation. Trump was unclear about what funding he would cut and said that his administration had “taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table.’’
The statement appeared to contradict his own assurances, and those of other US officials, that the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty within Jerusalem were still up for discussion. He also said that the Israelis “would have had to pay more’’ for the recognition of their capital, suggesting that the country would have had to reciprocate with significant concessions to the Palestinians.
The relationship between Israel and the UN Relief and Works Agency is complicated. Israel has accused the agency of perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem, while at the same time valuing the education, health care, and food assistance it provides to more than 2 million Palestinians registered as refugees in the West Bank and Gaza.
Without the agency’s assistance, Israelis worry they would have to shoulder the cost. Any drastic cut in funding, either to the agency or to the Palestinian Authority and its security forces, would most likely destabilize these areas, according to experts. Even some Israelis who are generally critical of the Palestinians expressed reservations about any sudden cut in donations.
“To stop all the money that is going to UNRWA overnight would be devastating,’’ said Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It should be a process during which the Palestinians take on responsibility and slowly, slowly UNRWA ceases to exist.’’
