Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Trump: "I don't know that [peace talks] will ever take place"

US President Donald Trump has threatened to halt aid to the Palestinians if they do not agree to take part in peace talks.

The state department confirmed he was talking about aid for economic and security assistance.

Mr Trump accused the Palestinians of "disrespecting" the US, and said: "Why should we do something for them when they do nothing for us?"

The Palestinians have rejected the US as a neutral broker in peace talks.

They are furious at Washington's controversial decision in December to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Former Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said of the US president's latest comments: "Trump could buy many things with his money, but he won't be able to buy the dignity of our nation."

Why the focus on Palestinian aid?

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland, Mr Trump said the US gives the Palestinians "hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and support" a year.

He chastised the Palestinian leadership for "disrespecting... our great Vice-President" Mike Pence by refusing to meet with him in the region earlier in the week.

And he said he was the first US president to link the issue of aid funding to the peace process.

"That money is on the table and it's not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace," he said, sitting beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"I can tell you that Israel does want to make peace and they're [the Palestinians] going to have to want to make peace too or we're going to have nothing to do with it any longer."

Image copyright EPA Image caption Mr Trump accused Palestinian leaders of "disrespecting" US Vice-President Mike Pence

The US announced earlier this month that it was withholding more than half of a tranche of funding for the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, amounting to about $65m (£46m).

But the US state department later confirmed this was not the aid Mr Trump was referring too. He was instead talking about bilateral funding for economic support and some security training.

US bilateral aid to the Palestinians amounted to $260m in 2016. By contrast, Israel receives more than $3bn in military aid per year from the US.

Aid as a bargaining tool

Barbara Plett Usher, BBC News, State Department Correspondent

This seems to be the first time the White House has used aid as a bargaining chip to try to force the Palestinians to negotiate peace.

It's one way to "shake things up" in hopes of getting people "back to the table," according to the state department spokesperson Heather Nauert.

There would be at least a tremor if the US withheld the bilateral aid. Most of it goes to economic development projects, though some is also used to train security forces.

But the practical outcome of Mr Trump's statement might be limited. Israel needs the PA to run the occupied territories and may counsel against weakening it. Politically this has made the Palestinians even more adamant about rejecting sole US leadership of any peace talks.

Mr Trump's manoeuvre has also underscored the failure of President Mahmoud Abbas, who staked everything on the US-led process and now might have less than nothing to show for it. Perhaps this will be what it takes to "shake up" the ossified Palestinian leadership.

What about the peace process?

The US president said his administration had a "proposal for peace" that was "a great proposal for the Palestinians" and suggested Israel was prepared to make some concessions.

"You won one point," he said to Mr Netanyahu, referring to Jerusalem, "and you'll give up some points later on in the negotiation, if it ever takes place."

But he added: "I don't know that they [peace talks] will ever take place."

The last round of on-off peace talks between the two sides collapsed amid acrimony in April 2014.

What did Trump say about Jerusalem?

Mr Trump stood by his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital - a move that broke with decades of a US policy of neutrality on the issue and put it out of step with the rest of the international community.

He told Mr Netanyahu: "Israel has always supported the United States so what I did with Jerusalem was my honour."

And he reiterated his view that by taking "Jerusalem off the [negotiating] table... we don't have to talk about it any more" - suggesting it could move forward the peace process.

"They [the Palestinians] never got past Jerusalem," he said.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Why the ancient city of Jerusalem is so important

The status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel regards Jerusalem as its "eternal and undivided" capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem - occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war - as the capital of a future state.

What do the Palestinians say?

The Palestinian ambassador to the US said they were not being "disrespectful of anybody... we were just respectful of our rights and defending our internationally endorsed rights".

Dr Husam Zomlot admitted that the lack of US aid would "directly affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent, vulnerable people all over the region".

But, he told the BBC, "financial pressure for coercive political agendas does not work.. especially when our position is supported by the international community".

He said Mr Trump had not just "taken Jerusalem off the table, he has taken the table altogether". He called for an international table "that can actually deliver us where we want to go".

Mr Abbas has dismissed previous threats by Mr Trump to cut US aid as "blackmail". He has also said he would not accept any peace plan proposed by the US.

Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has accused Donald Trump of "blackmail" over past threats to cut US aid

What does Israel say?

Prime Minister Netanyahu was effusive in his praise of Mr Trump over his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"By recognising history, you've made history, and we will always remember that," he told the US president.

He later told a meeting at Davos that "under any peace agreement the capital of Israel will continue to be in Jerusalem".

He also said that "the Palestinians should have all the power to govern themselves but none of the power to threaten us".

"In any political arrangement the Jews must retain security control in the area, because otherwise you'll have [the Islamic State group] ... We have a mosaic of failed states in the Middle East, and we don't want another one," he continued.

Find more on this story here: </s> WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump is threatening to cut off U.S. aid money to the Palestinian Authority and acknowledging that the Middle East peace process appears to be stalled.

Trump says in a pair of tweets that, "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 adds that, "with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?"

Trump infuriated many when he announced late last year that the U.S. would consider Jerusalem the capital of Israel and move its embassy there.

Trump has long said he wants to broker Mideast peace, calling it "the ultimate deal." </s> President Donald Trump listens people speak in support of Republican tax policy reform, during an event in the Grand Foyer of the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2017, in Washington.

U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States may withhold future payments to the Palestinians because they are "no longer willing to talk peace" with Israel, and that Israel would have "had to pay more" in future negotiations in return for his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December.

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Trump made the comments on Twitter on Tuesday, saying: "It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, 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."

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...peace treaty with Israel. 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? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

>>FACT CHECK: How much funding does the U.S. give the Palestinians - and what would happen if Trump cuts it

Trump went on to write: "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?"

Trump's tweet implied that he intended to extract possible future concessions from Israel for his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and that in light of the subsequent Palestinian decision to stop all engagements with the Trump administration, he plans to significantly decrease American funding to the Palestinian Authority.

In response to the Trump's tweets, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the PLO Executive Committee, said that Trump had "not only violated international law," but had "singlehandedly destroyed the very foundations of peace."

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Ashwari accused Trump of sabotaging the Palestinians' "search for peace, freedom and justice," charging that the U.S president was now blaming the Palestinians "for the consequences of his own irresponsible actions!"

Trump's comments came hours after U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said during a press conference in New York that the Trump administration would cut funding to UNRWA, the UN's agency for aiding Palestinian refugees, unless the Palestinian Authority went back to the negotiating table.

It was not immediately clear from Haley's comments if she was referring only to UNRWA's funding, or to general U.S. funding related to the Palestinian Authority, but either way, her statement will be perceived as a threat and an attempt to coerce the Palestinians into peace talks under the guidance of the Trump administration.

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When @nikkihaley says the #US will stop funding @UNRWA - how big is the threat? Here is the agency’s 2016 top-20 donors list. The #US is the largest bilateral donor. Read more: https://t.co/BhWw2VTf9S pic.twitter.com/6KGqRpWKSN — Noa Landau (@noa_landau) January 2, 2018

"He 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 was not helpful to the situation," Haley said. "We're trying to move for a peace process, but if that doesn't happen, the president is not going to continue to fund that situation."

Haley added that "I stood proudly, even if I was the only hand in the Security Council, to fight for the will of the people of the United States. They wanted to see the embassy moved to Jerusalem and we followed through with that. We very much still want to have a peace process, nothing changes with that. The Palestinians now have to show the world they want to come to the table. As of now, they're not coming to the table, but they ask for aid. We're not giving the aid, we're going to make sure they come to the table and we want to move forward with the peace process."

Thus far, UNRWA has not been informed of any changes in U.S. funding to the agency, organization spokesman Christopher Gunness said. </s> The United States has announced its withholding $65 million in aid to Palestinian refugees but is insistent the move is not aimed at punishing Palestinians.

Washington officially announced Tuesday that it is freezing the funds “for future consideration.” The money was set to be allocated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which works with Palestinian refugees.

"This is not aimed at punishing anyone,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a media briefing.

It was initially reported ten days ago that Washington would withhold $125 million from the UN-affiliated body, but official word only arrived Tuesday. The funds were supposed to be paid at the start of the year.

The decision to suspend the aid comes two weeks after President Donald Trump threatened to cut funding. In a tweet on January 2, Trump said the US gets no “appreciation or respect” from Palestine despite donating hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

“They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel... With the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?” Trump said.

The tweets came after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected Trump’s move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Abbas added that the US can no longer be considered an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

A US official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, did not link the fund freeze to the president’s tweets, instead demanding that other countries do more to help Palestine.

“It is time other countries, some of them quite wealthy, step in and do their part to advance regional security and stability,” the official said. </s> Washington: United States (US) president Donald Trump has ordered the state department to withdraw $200 million-worth aid which was previously planned for West Bank and Gaza.

"At the direction of the President, we will redirect more than $200 million in FY 2017 Economic Support Funds originally planned for programs in the West Bank and Gaza. Those funds will now address high-priority projects elsewhere," a senior state department official told CNN.

The decision to withdraw the aid comes after Trump ordered a review of "US assistance to the Palestinian Authority and in the West Bank and Gaza to ensure these funds are spent in accordance with US national interests and provide value to the US taxpayer."

Condemning the decision, Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi said the US administration was "demonstrating the use of cheap blackmail as a political tool," and added that the Palestinian leadership would not be intimidated by the same.

"There is no glory in constantly bullying and punishing a people under occupation. The US administration has already demonstrated meanness of spirit in its collusion with the Israeli occupation and its theft of land and resources; now it is exercising economic meanness by punishing the Palestinian victims of this occupation," Ashrawi said. </s> President Donald Trump said that "with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?” | Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images Trump floats cutting payments to Palestinians

President Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday that the U.S. should consider cutting payments to the Palestinians, saying their officials “don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel.”

"[W]e pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect,” the president posted on Twitter. “They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more.”

Story Continued Below

He added: “But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”

It was unclear which payments to the Palestinian Authority the president was questioning. But the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said earlier Tuesday that Trump planned to withhold money for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the entity tasked with aiding Palestinian refugees, if their leaders did not fully engage in the U.S.-led peace process with Israel.

“He 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 was not helpful to the situation,” Haley told reporters at the U.N. headquarters in New York. “We’re trying to move for a peace process, but if that doesn’t happen, the president is not going to continue to fund that situation.”

Last month, Trump announced that the U.S. was recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and planned to move its embassy there from Tel Aviv. After an outcry from Palestinian officials, Yemen and Turkey drafted a U.N. resolution to demand that the U.S. reverse its decision. Trump floated the idea of cutting aid to U.N. nations that voted for the resolution, but the General Assembly overwhelmingly approved it, 128 to 9, with 35 nations abstaining.

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The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, said the Trump White House had “disqualified” itself from participating in the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians after the U.S. failed to muster sufficient international support for its declaration on Jerusalem.

At the same time, the move by the White House has seemingly emboldened right-wing Israeli leaders.

The Likud Central Committee, the guiding group behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling party, voted unanimously over the weekend to approve a resolution calling for leaders to apply Israeli law to settlements in the West Bank. The resolution, which proposes unlimited construction in the West Bank, prompted a backlash from Palestinian authorities.

Early Tuesday, the Israeli Parliament voted to make it more difficult for both sides to negotiate Jerusalem in any peace negotiations. Both Israel and the Palestinians claim parts of Jerusalem as their capital, with the issue a linchpin in efforts to arrive at a two-state solution. </s> RAMALLAH: US President Donald Trump's administration is resorting to "cheap blackmail" against the Palestinians, revealing its true intentions by cutting more than US$200 million in aid for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, senior Palestinian officials said Saturday.

A State Department official said on Friday that the decision, made "at the direction of the president", came after a review of aid programmes to the Palestinian territories.

The funding would "now address high-priority projects elsewhere", it added.

Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), said the decision amounts to an "admission of the true intentions behind American aid policy of intervening in the internal affairs of other peoples".

US aid "is not a gift to our people but a duty of the international community to take responsibility for the continuation of Israeli occupation, preventing the development of the Palestinian economy and society," he said.

By slashing its aid to the Palestinians, the US "once again reaffirms its disregard for its international commitments", Erekat added.

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO's executive committee, accused the US of using "cheap blackmail as a political tool".

"The Palestinian people and leadership will not be intimidated and will not succumb to coercion. The rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale," she said.

The United States had already made drastic cuts to its contribution to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in January.

Relations between the US administration and the Palestinian Authority took a nosedive after Trump in December decided to recognise the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The Palestinians have suspended contacts with Washington and believe it can no longer be an impartial mediator in the Middle East peace process.

After the latest blow, Ashrawi insisted that Palestinians living under Israeli occupation would not be coerced into surrendering their rights.

"There is no glory in constantly bullying and punishing a people under occupation," she said in a statement.

"The US administration has already demonstrated meanness of spirit in its collusion with the Israeli occupation and its theft of land and resources," she said.

"Now it is exercising economic meanness by punishing the Palestinian victims of this occupation."

The Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, also denounced the aid cut.

Facing "the American policy of blackmail" necessitated "unifying the Palestinian ranks", spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told AFP.

In an initial reaction on Friday, the PLO's representative in Washington, Husam Zomlot, told the US administration was "dismantling decades of US vision and engagement in Palestine".

He said Friday's move was "another confirmation" that Washington was "abandoning the two-state solution and fully embracing (Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin) Netanyahu's anti-peace agenda."

The decision to cut Palestinian funding comes as a humanitarian crisis deepens in Gaza, which has seen a surge of violence since Palestinian protests erupted in March.

At least 172 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, the vast majority of them during demonstrations near the border. </s> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will give a U.N. agency $60 million in aid for Palestinians but withhold a further $65 million for now, a U.S. official said on Tuesday as the Trump administration appeared to carry out a threat it made two weeks ago to cut funding.

While saying the decision would sustain schools and health services, the U.S. official echoed U.S. President Donald Trump in calling on other nations to provide more funds because he believes the United States pays more than its share.

The decision to keep back some money is likely to compound the difficulty of reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and to further undermine Arabs’ faith that the United States can act as an impartial arbitrator, particularly following Trump’s Dec. 6 announcement reversing decades of U.S. policy and recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

A Palestinian official quickly criticized Washington’s decision to keep back some of the money and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was unaware of any change on aid but he was “very concerned” about the possibility of a cut in funding.

The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) that will receive the money needed to be fundamentally reevaluated “in the way it operates and the way it is funded.”

“Without the funds we are providing today, UNRWA operations were at risk of running out of funds and closing down. The funds provided by the United States will prevent that from happening for the immediate future,” the official said, saying the additional “$65 million will be held for future consideration.”

In a Twitter post on Jan. 2, Trump said that Washington gives 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 ... with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?” Trump added in his tweet.

While the U.S. official did not link the U.S. decision to Trump’s tweet, he made a point often advanced by the president by saying the United States had been UNRWA’s single largest donor for decades and demanded other nations do more.

“It is time other countries, some of them quite wealthy, step in and do their part to advance regional security and stability,” the official said.

Trump’s aides initially debated whether to cut off all UNRWA aid after the tweet, a second U.S. official said. But those opposed to the idea argued that it could further destabilize the region, the official said.

“This decision confirms the U.S administration is continuing in wiping out the rights of the Palestinian people,” Palestine Liberation Organization official Wasel Abu Youssef told Reuters.

“First was declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and today the refugee issue,” he said.

Historically, U.S. administrations had said the status of Jerusalem must be decided in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The city is holy to three major monotheistic faiths.

At the United Nations, Guterres told reporters that the services provided by UNRWA were “of extreme importance, not only for the wellbeing of these populations ... but also in my opinion and an opinion that is shared by most international observers, including some Israeli ones, it is an important factor of stability.”

“So if UNRWA will not be in a position to provide the vital services and the emergency forms of support that UNRWA has been providing this will create a very, very serious problem and we will do everything we can to avoid this situation,” he said. </s> President Donald Trump raised the prospect Tuesday of cutting off aid to the Palestinian territories unless Palestinian leaders agree to resume negotiations to broker a peace deal with Israel.

He also appeared to contradict his previous statement that the US recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital would not impact the final status of Jerusalem in peace negotiations, claiming instead that "we have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table."

"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," Trump tweeted. "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?"

A White House spokesman declined to comment about the apparent contradiction.

Trump's tweets late Tuesday afternoon came nearly a month after he became the first sitting US President to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, drawing Palestinians into the streets in protest.

A central committee member of the powerful Palestine Liberation Organization, Hanan Ashrawi, responded to Trump's threat to cut aid by saying that "Palestinian rights are not for sale."

"We will not be blackmailed," Ashrawi said in a statement sent Wednesday morning.

"By recognizing Occupied Jerusalem as Israel's capital Donald Trump has not only violated international law, but he has also singlehandedly destroyed the very foundations of peace and condoned Israel's illegal annexation of the city."

Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital caused Palestinian leaders to reject the US' decades-old role as the central negotiator in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas earlier claimed that Trump's recognition of Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital, discredited the US as an honest broker in the peace process.

And while Trump administration officials told CNN last month that the Jerusalem decision did not mean tougher concessions for Israelis down the line, Trump wrote in his tweet that "Israel, for that, would have had to pay more."

While Trump administration officials have said they expected a "cooling off period" with the Palestinians, Trump's tweets Tuesday signaled the President has grown frustrated with Palestinians' refusal to partake in a US-led peace process in the wake of his Jerusalem decision. The tweets also came after the White House confirmed that the US plans to withhold some of its aid to Pakistan to pressure the country into better counterterrorism cooperation with the US.

The US spent $616 million on aid to the Palestinian territories in 2016, according to the US Agency for International Development, which includes humanitarian assistance, private sector debt payments and infrastructure development assistance.

The President's tweets late Tuesday afternoon, though, did more than threaten US aid to Palestinians -- they also appeared to contradict his own statements about the impact of his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and may have undermined his administration's efforts to hammer home that message in the Middle East.

"We are not taking a position on any of the final status issues including the final boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem," Trump said last month as he made his Jerusalem announcement. "Those questions are up to the parties involved. The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides."

Trump's statement at the announcement was intended to reassure Palestinians and the broader Arab and Muslim world that the US was not giving away control of Jerusalem to Israel or forsaking Palestinian claims to the holy city.

And in the weeks after, Trump administration officials would urge those inflamed by Trump's decision to pay attention to his message about "not taking a position" on the future status of Jerusalem.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to stop aid to Palestine if they do not agree to partake in peace talks with Israel.