Trump Suggests Slashing Aid To Palestinian Authority – ‘No Appreciation Or Respect…’
President Trump has been very active on Twitter this week, as he’s taken on the Pakistanis, North Koreans, and now Palestinians, and it’s only Wednesday. Trump’s usually at his best when he’s brazenly speaking his mind via social media, and so far this week, we’ve seen him toss out some very good ideas that his predecessors would never have even considered.
As reported at the New York Post, President Trump threw out the possibility of cutting off foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday, in light of the political group’s continued antics concerning the peace process with Israel.
“We pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect,” Trump tweeted Tuesday evening.
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“They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel.” Trump laid most of the blame for the stalled peace talks at the feet of the Palestinians, who’ve been in deadlocked negotiations with the Israelis for many, many years.
The recent Palestinian behavior is due to Trump’s decision to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which has been met with condemnation from not only the Muslim world but our European allies at the United Nations.
“We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more,” Trump tweeted. “But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”
On Monday, Trump threatened to cut aid to our contentious “ally” Pakistan, as he accused the nation of nothing but “lies and deceit,” despite receiving billions in aid and military assistance over the last decade.
While the number the US spends on the Palestinians is far less than the Pakistanis, it’s nothing to scoff at, as it eclipses $300 million annually.
The Congressional Research Service found in 2016 that “since the establishment of limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the mid-1990s, the U.S. government has committed more than $5 billion in bilateral economic and non-lethal security assistance to the Palestinians, who are among the world’s largest per capita recipients of international foreign aid.”
The tiny, fragmented pseudo-state receives a ridiculous amount of aid from the US and the rest of the world. If they’re going to continue throwing a wrench into the peace process with Israel, then it makes perfect sense to pull their undeserved funding. There are plenty of problems in the US that money could be spent on.
Source: New York Post
