Trump Threatens Palestinian Authority Funding

President Donald Trump threatened to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday with two tweets that criticized Palestinian leaders for showing “no appreciation or respect” to the U.S. and being “no longer willing to talk peace.”

The context for Trump’s remarks was the administration’s announcement earlier in the day that it was suspending $255 million in aid to Pakistan because of that government’s alleged “double game” on terrorism.

“They work with us at times, and they also harbor the terrorists that attack our troops in Afghanistan,” UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said to reporters, according to Reuters. “That game is not acceptable to this administration. We expect far more cooperation from Pakistan in the fight against terrorism.”

Trump later tweeted:

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said Tuesday that the Trump administration would be withholding funds for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a special refugee program that only deals with Palestinians, until the Palestinian leaders came back to the negotiating table.

“[President Trump] doesn’t want to give any additional funding until the Palestinians agree to come back to the negotiation table, and what we saw with the resolution [on Jerusalem] was not helpful to the situation,” she told reporters.

President Trump has already signaled his support for the Taylor Force Act, which passed the House last month and would cut some U.S. funds to the Palestinian Authority as long as it continues to pay stipends to Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons and the families of dead Palestinian terrorists.

The Palestinian Authority has been sharply critical of the Trump administration since the president’s decision last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

This article has been updated to include the Trump administration’s withholding of UNRWA funding.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.