Threats from the US administration to cut aid to Palestinians are a new approach to imposing conditions on Palestinians to end the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict, experts said Sunday. The threats are a clear financial and political blackmail aimed at distorting the Palestinians' arm to make them accept US demands to end the conflict with Israel, observers said. On Friday, Israeli media reported that the United States frozen US $ 125 million of 346 million donated annually to the United Nations agency that cares for Palestinian refugees after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to engage in peace negotiations with Israel. The cuts in aid came just days after US President Donald Trump threatened to do so to the Palestinians if they refused to return to the negotiating table with Israel. On Twitter, Trump said Tuesday that "we pay the Palestinians hundreds of millions of dollars a year and get no appreciation or respect, they don't even want to negotiate a lengthy peace treaty with Israel ... with Palestinians who don't want to talk about peace anymore. , why should we make these huge payments? In response, the Palestinian presidency condemned the US threats, arguing that negotiations and true peace should be based on international and Arab legitimacy. "US threats are primarily aimed at subjecting Palestinians to US dictates," said Ahmed Awad, professor of political science at Beir Zeit University. The US has adopted a new policy based on the imposition of financial sanctions and embargoes in addition to threats of use of force, which is an extremely new style that has never been used by previous US administrations, Awad said. "The United States and Israel are not really trying to negotiate with Arabs or Palestinians, they just want to impose their terms with the force of money," he stressed. The Palestinian side, on the other hand, should also follow new policies, Awad said. Ties between the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and the United States have worsened since Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move that has angered millions of Arabs and Muslims around the world. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their future independent state, while Israel wants all of Jerusalem to be its eternal capital. While Israel took over East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war and declared the entire city as its eternal indivisible capital in 1980, it has not been recognized by the international community. Palestinians insist that they should establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as the capital in the final settlement. Under the previous Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, the status of Jerusalem should be determined through talks on the final status between Israel and the Palestinians. All countries have so far located their embassies in Tel Aviv, in order to promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. "The policies of the United States and Israel blocked the way to the serious peace process after they openly confronted the Palestinians and all their supporters," said Talal Okal, an observer and political writer from Gaza. Okal believes that the Palestinians should put aside their differences and adopt a unified strategy to counter the growing challenges that endanger the future of the Palestinian cause. "The international community should support the Palestinians by all means against US blackmail in order to make peace complete and equitable," Okal added.
