Palestinian Leadership To US - We Despise You, Now Give Us Our Money - By Bassam Tawil -
The question of Palestinian responsiveness is once again on display as Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his senior officials in Ramallah step up their verbal attacks on the US administration after its decision to cut $200 million in American financial aid to the Palestinians.
Abbas and the PA leadership are again behaving like spoiled, angry children whose candy has been taken away from them, hurling abuse at the Trump administration. Recall that earlier this year, Abbas called US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman a "son of a dog."
For the past 9 months, the Palestinian leaders have been waging a massive and unprecedented campaign of incitement and abuse against Trump and his administration. This campaign began immediately after Trump announced his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December 2017, and the campaign is continuing to this day as a reply to the US decision to slash $200 million from the American financial aid to the Palestinians.
Significantly, the PA and its leaders were the ones who initiated the crisis with the US administration. Their dissatisfaction with Trump's announcement on Jerusalem may be understandable, but they chose to take their protest to an extreme by boycotting the US administration and waging a smear campaign against Trump and his "Jewish advisors and envoys."
It is clear that the Palestinian boycott of the US administration did not include receiving funds from the Americans. One the one hand, the Palestinians have been boycotting and badmouthing US administration officials. On the other hand, Abbas and his representatives are now crying that the US administration is slashing $200 million of its financial aid to the Palestinians. If this isn't cheek in its finest form, what is?
The Arabic word for cheek, by the way, is wakaha. Were Abbas to behave in the same manner towards an Arab country for cutting financial aid to the Palestinians, he would have been accused by his Arab brothers of displaying wakaha at its best. Abbas, however, would think ten times before he uttered a bad word against any Arab country.
The Palestinians are basically telling the Americans: We have the right to condemn you every day, to burn your flags and photos of your president, to incite against you, to launch weekly protests against you, to accuse you of being under the "influence of the Jewish and Zionist lobby" and, at the same time, we have the right to continue receiving US taxpayer money.
Judging from their actions and assertions in the past few months, the Palestinians have turned the US into an enemy. They consider the US to be in "collusion" with the Israeli government and a "full partner in Israeli crimes against the Palestinians." They say they no longer trust the US to play any role in a peace process with Israel because of the Trump administration's "blind bias" in favor of Israel and its "hostile" policies towards the Palestinians.
The Palestinians, of course, are entitled to voice their anger at the US. However, if they are so fed up with the US that they are even boycotting US administration officials, why are they demanding that the Americans continue to supply them with hundreds of millions of dollars each year? Where's the vaunted Arab dignity, which requires an Arab not to humiliate himself in return for money, especially if it comes from someone you consider an enemy?
The answer to this question can be found in a statement issued on August 25 by PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat in response to the US decision to cut the $200 million in aid to the Palestinians. "The international community is not doing the Palestinians a favor by providing them with financial aid," Erekat argued. "This is a due duty of the international community, which bears responsibility for the continued Israeli occupation."
Erekat's statement reflects a long-standing Palestinian position according to which the US and the rest of the international community owe the Palestinians money for supporting Israel's existence. The Palestinian position stems from a belief that the international community, specifically the Americans and Europeans, were responsible for the establishment of Israel in 1948 at the cost of the Palestinians. This position was best echoed by Abbas himself, who has said that Israel is a "colonial project" imposed on the Palestinians by Western powers.
This attitude means that the Palestinians have never seen the massive financial aid they have received from the West as a gift but rather as something that the world owes them for imposing a "colonial project" on them. The billions of dollars the Palestinians have received in the past few decades have evidently left no positive impression on the Palestinians, who feel that the funds are something they are fully entitled to because of the world's support for the existence of Israel.
The Palestinians, in other words, apparently do not feel they have to be grateful to those who have been funding them for decades. If the Europeans were to take a similar decision today and cut funding to the Palestinians, they too would be condemned by Abbas and his officials for being "hostile" towards the Palestinians and "biased" in favor of Israel.
The ongoing Palestinian rhetorical attacks on the US administration are dangerous because they further radicalize the Palestinian public and turn the Americans into an enemy in the eyes of many Palestinians. In recent months, we have seen increased hostility towards American officials and citizens visiting the West Bank as a direct result of this incitement.
Last July, the US Consul-General in Jerusalem was forced to cancel a visit to the Palestinian city of Nablus after Palestinians threatened to stage protests against him and his entourage.
A month earlier, Palestinian protesters expelled a US consular delegation from the city of Bethlehem and threw tomatoes at their vehicles. No one was hurt, but the incident, which was documented on camera, was impolite and degrading for the Americans.
The Palestinians are now accusing the US of attempting to "blackmail" them by cutting the funds. According to the Palestinians, the US administration wants to force them to accept Trump's yet-to-be-unveiled plan for peace in the Middle East.
It is worth noting, however, that the US administration has not yet presented its purported plan to the Palestinians or to any other party. So how can the US administration be trying to pressure or "blackmail" the Palestinians when no peace plan has ever been made public? Can the Palestinians point to one US administration official who asked them to accept the unseen plan or support Trump's policies? Of course not.
There is indeed blackmail going on -- but in precisely the opposite direction. The Palestinians are trying to blackmail the US by claiming, absurdly, that the recent US decisions jeopardize the two-state solution and prospects for peace in the Middle East.
These are the very Palestinians, however, who have refused to resume peace talks with Israel for the past four years, since long before Trump was elected as president.
Common sense would have it that the US has a right to demand something from any party it helps to support -- including the Palestinians. But the Palestinians see things differently. In their view, billions of dollars are owed to them as some sort of divine right. And if their behavior calls into question whether they deserve that money -- well, those asking questions can just go back where they came from.
What's On & Off The Table When It Comes To Middle East Peace - By Sean Savage -
Long eluding his predecessors, U.S. President Donald Trump has not shied away from attempting to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he has called the "deal of the century."
Trump has broken with previous administrations by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and relocating the U.S. embassy there. While relations with Israel may be at an all-time high, the same cannot be said of the Palestinians, who have officially boycotted the Trump administration since last year's announcement over Jerusalem and what they perceive as favoritism towards Israel at present.
In recent weeks, tensions between the Palestinians and Trump have increased with the Trump administration cutting more than $200 million in assistance to the Palestinians. This also comes as the Trump administration has withheld $65 million to UNRWA, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency dedicated solely to the needs of Palestinian refugees, with additional reports indicating that the United States may cut all funding to UNRWA in the coming weeks.
The growing strain has also been exacerbated by speculation over the announcement of plan by the administration to bring forth a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and expert on Palestinian politics, told JNS that the intent of the Trump administration's cuts targeting the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA seem to be geared towards weakening the Palestinian's negotiating position ahead of talks.
"The logic here seems to be an intent to weaken the Palestinian negotiating position before rolling out the peace process, with the intent of offering a lifeline to lure them into a new paradigm," he said. "The cuts to the P.A. and UNRWA certainly have the potential to be destabilizing. It really depends on how long this period lasts. It should not be prolonged if the intent is to prevent instability."
Yet Ghaith al-Omari, an expert on Palestinian and Arab matters for the Washington Institution for Near East Policy, said the cuts by the Trump administration will likely play right into the hands of the Palestinian leadership.
"These cuts will undoubtedly have a negative impact on the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza, but the public anger will be directed against the U.S. and Israel not the P.A.," he said. "The angry mood created by these measures plays into the P.A.'s hands as it reinforces [Mahmoud] Abbas's rhetoric casting the Trump administration as an antagonist."
As such, al-Omari believes that this will bolster the Palestinian public's support for Abbas not to engage with Trump, while also possibly producing volatility in the West Bank and Gaza.
"These cuts could produce instability that could manifest in a deteriorating security atmosphere in the West Bank and Gaza dues to the worsening humanitarian conditions," he said.
Tackling UNRWA 'head on'
Nevertheless, the Trump administration has begun targeting UNRWA with the hope of reforming the institution that provides services to more than 5 million Palestinian refugees. Detractors have argued that UNRWA, which counts every Arab who fled during the 1948 War of Independence and their descendants as refugees--an arrangement that is exclusive to just the Palestinian refugees--has helped to perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by keeping millions of Palestinians as permanent refugees.
"We will be a donor if it [UNRWA] reforms what it does ... if they actually change the number of refugees to an accurate account, we will look back at partnering them," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said recently.
Additional reports have also indicated that the Trump administration may officially refute the Palestinian "right of return."
Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and a co-author of the 2013 book Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief, explains that the cuts by the Trump administration to UNRWA will help raise awareness over the issues concerning UNRWA.
"I suspect the cuts will be part of the preconditions for talks which the P.A. will reject. That said, [they] will ultimately raise national awareness re: UNRWA's functionality," he said.
"It also sheds light on the subversive dynamic between UNRWA and the Palestinian leadership; the existence of UNRWA allows the Palestinian Authority to continue shirking core responsibilities towards its citizens," he added.
While the United States has not ignored the issue of UNRWA in the past--with a number of congressional resolutions seeking to limit or cut off funding, as well as promoting transparency and accountability in regards to UNRWA since the 1970s--Romirowsky said this is the first time the issue has been tackled head on.
"Understanding the way that UNRWA helps perpetuate the Palestinian refugee problem reveals an entrenched and dysfunctional bureaucracy, accustomed to 70 years of international welfare, including over $370 million from the U.S. in 2016," he said.
Involving the Arab world in peace talks
At the same time, reports over the past year have emerged indicating that the Trump administration has been reaching out to Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, which has no formal diplomatic ties with Israel, to play a role in facilitating peace. Reports have even gone as far as to suggest that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states may normalize relations with Israel before striking a deal with the Palestinians.
"The Trump administration initially tried to build on the shared Israel and Arab concerns regarding Iran in order to adopt the 'outside-in' approach, whereby they sought to convince Arab states to open relations with Israel before a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal is concluded," said al-Omari. "These efforts were bound to fail since Arab states have traditionally and consistently been unwilling to pay the political and diplomatic price of publicly opposing or even going ahead of the Palestinians on such an emotive issue."
In June, both Kushner and Greenblatt visited several Arab states--Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar--in a bid to reportedly drum up support ahead of the Trump administration's rollout of its peace plan. Kushner and Greenblatt also discussed with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman about providing humanitarian relief to the Gaza Strip, according to the White House at the time.
Additional reports have also circulated regarding Israel attempting to form a long-term truce with Hamas through indirect negotiations via Egypt and other Arab states, such as Qatar.
Nevertheless, Schanzer believes that the Arab Gulf states remain key to the success or failure any peace deal for the Trump administration.
"If the Gulf states can exert their influence and push the Palestinians toward the Trump position--whatever that may be--then there is a fighting chance for success. It certainly won't be the United States or even members of the [Middle East] Quartet fulfilling this role," he said.
The 'deal of the century'
Moving forward, it is unclear exactly what type of plan the Trump administration aims to introduce. Experts are split on whether or not Trump will continue support for a two-state solution or introduce a new paradigm to the equation.
"From what we can see, this will be vastly different. Every other process has brought the Palestinians and Israelis to the table as equals,' said Schanzer. "The Trump team will do no such thing."
"What we are seeing is a dynamic that is reflective of the actual dynamic on the ground--one in which the Israelis have significant power and assets, and the Palestinians do not. This will be the starting point in these negotiations. We will soon find out whether this is a successful strategy."
However, al-Omari believes that while a new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be "welcome" if it takes core issues like Jerusalem and refugees "off the table," then that could doom any prospects it might have.
"Such an approach is bound to be robustly opposed not only by the Palestinians," he said, "but also by various Arab states, including U.S. allies such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."
Palestinian Refugees: Trump's Reality Check - by Ruthie Blum - https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12942/palestinian-refugees-unrwa-reality
The Trump administration's reported plan to overturn US policy on the issue of Palestinian refugees is long overdue. According, initially, to media reports, the new policy -- scheduled to be unveiled in early September and based on sealed classified information from the US State Department -- will reduce the number of Palestinians defined by the UN as "refugees" from five million to 500,000, thus refuting the figures claimed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The UN figures include descendants (not only children, but grandchildren and great grandchildren) of Palestinians across the world who have never even set foot in Israel, the Gaza Strip or the Palestinian Authority (PA). The new plan will also apparently include a rejection of the Palestinians' so-called "right of return" to Israel of refugees and their descendants.
Washington also announced that it is cutting all US funding to UNRWA, and will reportedly "ask Israel to 'reconsider' the mandate it gives UNRWA to operate in the West Bank."
This reining in of UNRWA operations -- which began in January 2018, when President Donald Trump imposed a $65 million freeze on America's annual funding -- is significant, as it is the first time an American administration has actually sought out and acted upon evidence about the Palestinian refugee organization. Until now, the US has continued to provide billions of dollars to UNRWA, even as monitoring organizations - such as UN Watch, Palestinian Media Watch and NGO Monitor - have repeatedly exposed the complete and ongoing abuse of its mandate, which is already rather a marvel:
"A more precise working definition of a mandate is difficult but necessary to determine how UNRWA's mandate is derived. The Secretary-General recently discussed the meaning of the term for the purposes of identifying and analysing mandates originating from resolutions of the General Assembly and other organs. The Secretary-General referred to the nature and definition of mandates for the purpose of his exercise:
"...Mandates are both conceptual and specific; they can articulate newly developed international norms, provide strategic policy direction on substantive and administrative issues, or request specific conferences, activities, operations and reports.
"For this reason, mandates are not easily defined or quantifiable; a concrete legal definition of a mandate does not exist....
"Although the term "Palestine refugee" is central to UNRWA's mandate, the General Assembly has not expressly defined it. The General Assembly has tacitly approved the operational definition used in annual reports of the Commissioner- General setting out the definition. The operational definition has evolved slightly through Agency internal instructions but in practice there are political and institutional limits on the extent to which the Agency is able to develop the definition itself...." (Emphasis added)
Even more disturbing is that a State Department report delivered to Congress in 2015, which revealed crucial information about UNRWA's purposeful inflation of the number of Palestinian refugees, was marked as "classified" and its findings purposely kept hidden. The existence of the report was exposed by the Washington Free Beacon in January 2018, nearly three years later. In April, when the report still had not been made public, 51 members of the House of Representatives signed a letter -- spurred by the Middle East Forum -- calling on Trump to declassify the report.
The letter reads, in part:
"...America has provided $1 billion to [UNRWA] over the last four fiscal years, and nearly $6 billion since UNRWA's inception in 1950. We are concerned that American taxpayer dollars are not being used properly. Your withholding of funds from UNRWA in January on the condition that they reform was a tremendous first step. American taxpayers deserve to know how they tax dollars are spent on Palestinian refugees and their descendants...
"In order to investigate the matter, the Senate Report 112-172 to the Department of State, Foreign Operations, And Related Programs Appropriations bill in 2012 directed the Department of State to issue a report to Congress detailing 'the approximate number of people who, in the past year, have received UNRWA services: (1) whose place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948 and who were displaces as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict; and (2) who are [their] descendants...
"...Finally, in 2015, the Obama State Department delivered the mandated report to Congress in classified form despite no apparent national security threat or known historical precedent...We believe this classification was inappropriate and a deliberate attempt to conceal information from American taxpayers..."
A subsequent appeal was issued in July, when members of the Congress called on the State Department to release the report. Now, it appears, not only are the findings about to be made public, but they are going to serve as the basis for the White House's new policy.
When asked about this new policy during the August 28 National Security Summit of the Washington, DC-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley explained the administration's increasingly tough stance towards UNRWA specifically and the Palestinian leadership in general:
"When you look at UNRWA... you're looking at the fact that, yes, there's an endless number of refugees that, continue to get assistance, but more importantly, the [Palestinian government continues] to bash America... They have their hand out wanting UNRWA money. We were supposed to, the last time, give them $130 million. We cut it in half, saying that they really needed to reform and fix the things they were doing, because they teach anti-Israeli and anti-American things in their textbooks. They are not necessarily doing things that would cause peace... it's very political..."
In a comprehensive 2017 piece on UNRWA, former Israeli Ambassador to Canada Alan Baker detailed just how "political" the organization has become:
"... UNRWA by its own admission, has proudly evolved from a temporary relief and works program into a broad social welfare organization within Palestinian society. It has become an independent political body, based solely on the continuing existence of the refugee issue. It maintains its own independent political interests, policies, and funding mechanisms.
"UNRWA employs 30,000 people, almost all Palestinian and some complicit in acts of violence and terror against Israel such as allowing Hamas rockets to be stored in and fired from UNRWA schools or grounds. In one case, after the weapons' discovery, UNRWA handed the rockets to Gaza government officials - in other words, back to Hamas officials."
It is thus surprising that Israeli defense officials reportedly responded to early reports of an impending US defunding of UNRWA with trepidation, apparently on the grounds that the move could "create a vacuum in the provision of basic services in the [Gaza] Strip, where the majority of residents are dependent on the organization," and "may strengthen the Hamas terror group in Gaza and endanger Israel's security."
These officials are wrong, according to former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor. In a recent op-ed in Israel Hayom, Prosor writes, in part:
"It is high time these officials realize that UNRWA - the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - is not the solution, but the problem. It is hard to believe that in Israel, of all places, these officials claim to be in favor of finding a solution to the seven-decade-long refugee problem, but when push comes to shove, it seems the timing is never right.
"Established for the exclusive benefit of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA has, instead of resolving the problem, done everything in its power to perpetuate it. Instead of peace and coexistence, it teaches hatred and incitement. Instead of fighting terrorist organizations, it collaborates with them... I am glad Washington finally gets it and I hope the people at IDF headquarters will soon come to their senses...
"While it is in Israel's long-term interest that UNRWA be closed, in practice the defense establishment acts as the agency's representative. Following the media reports, it took less than 24 hours for the fear-mongering to begin, with officials arguing that ending UNRWA's operations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would result in Israel being made to bear the burden of providing the education, health and welfare services for which the agency is currently responsible...
"There may be difficulties in the short term, but in the long term this action must be taken. We cannot allow tactical concerns to dictate policy and perpetuate a strategic problem.
"Responsibility for the Palestinians and the UNRWA budgets could be transferred to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which looks after the rest of the world's refugees and, unlike UNRWA, works toward solving the refugee problem instead of perpetuating it.
"Alternatively, U.N. agencies that already operate in the region, such as the United Nations Development Program, could be tasked with the job.
"Another option is to transfer the budgets directly to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, where UNRWA's presence is particularly problematic. As things stand today, the budgets are allocated to UNRWA, which cooperates with Hamas which in turn acts against the PA. Transferring the authority and the funds to Ramallah would serve to strengthen the PA."
Prosor concludes by praising Washington for "see[ing] things more clearly than they do in Tel Aviv," and urging Israel to adopt Trump's reported plan "wholeheartedly," as "the only way for the refugee problem to be resolved and possibly for us to come closer to finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Whether or not Prosor's suggestions would create more fertile ground for the Palestinian Authority to make its peace with the existence of the state of Israel has yet to be determined. What is clear is that the current PA leadership has been exhibiting open hostility to the US over the past 9 months.
As Gatestone's Bassam Tawil reported recently:
"The Palestinians are basically telling the Americans: We have the right to condemn you every day, to burn your flags and photos of your president, to incite against you, to launch weekly protests against you, to accuse you of being under the 'influence of the Jewish and Zionist lobby' and, at the same time, we have the right to continue receiving US taxpayer money...
"The ongoing Palestinian rhetorical attacks on the US administration are dangerous because they further radicalize the Palestinian public and turn the Americans into an enemy in the eyes of many Palestinians. In recent months, we have seen increased hostility towards American officials and citizens visiting the West Bank as a direct result of this incitement...
"The Palestinians are now accusing the US of attempting to "blackmail" them by cutting the funds. According to the Palestinians, the US administration wants to force them to accept Trump's yet-to-be-unveiled plan for peace in the Middle East.
"It is worth noting, however, that the US administration has not yet presented its purported plan to the Palestinians or to any other party. So how can the US administration be trying to pressure or "blackmail" the Palestinians when no peace plan has ever been made public? Can the Palestinians point to one US administration official who asked them to accept the unseen plan or support Trump's policies? Of course not.
"There is indeed blackmail going on -- but in precisely the opposite direction. The Palestinians are trying to blackmail the US by claiming, absurdly, that the recent US decisions jeopardize the two-state solution and prospects for peace in the Middle East.
"These are the very Palestinians, however, who have refused to resume peace talks with Israel for the past four years, since long before Trump was elected as president."
President Trump, apparently realizing this, has been sending a clear message to Palestinian leaders that they will no longer be permitted to use American money to perpetuate a refugee crisis that could long ago have been solved; to incite their populace to violence and terrorism through financial and other incentives -- and then expect to be rewarded for it; and to reject all peace overtures. Cutting UNRWA's funding seems to be a fine place to start.
Palestinians: Spitting in the Well - by Bassam Tawil -
Once again, the Palestinians are conveying conflicting messages about their attitude towards US President Donald Trump's administration. On one side, they are condemning the Trump administration for its decision to cut all US aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA); on the other, the Palestinians are opposed to any plan by the US administration to provide them with financial aid and improve their living conditions.
This Palestinian stance is not only bad-faith double-dealing, it also reflects the state of confusion and uncertainty among the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah in particular and the Palestinian public in general.
In reality, the Palestinians have one main message for the US administration: We hate you and incite against you, but we fully expect that you will continue providing us with cash, to the tune of billions of dollars. And, when you do try to help us, we reserve the right to spit in your face.
This is the message -- despite much duplicitous obfuscation -- that the Palestinians have long sought to communicate the US.
Now to the facts.
Earlier this week, Palestinians staged a protest in Ramallah against the Trump administration's decision to halt US aid to UNRWA. During the protest outside America House (the educational and cultural center belonging to the US Consulate General in the de facto capital of the Palestinians, Ramallah), the Palestinians burned photos of Trump and some of his senior representatives, including US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and presidential advisors Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt. The protesters chanted slogans condemning the Trump administration as being "fully complicit" with Israel in its "aggression and war" on the Palestinians.
In other words, the Palestinian protesters, who included senior officials of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah faction, are demanding that the US continue to fund Palestinian "refugees" through UNRWA. The message the protesters sent to the Trump administration is: Look, we burn the photos of your president and top officials and we hate you, so kindly continue to give us hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
As recently noted in this space, in Arabic this is called wakaha (impudence or audacity). It takes a lot of wakaha to spit in someone's face and then reach your hand out to beg for money.
A day after that protest in Ramallah, Palestinian protesters in east Jerusalem tried to prevent a group of Palestinian businessmen from attending a meeting organized by the US Consulate General. Guess who led the protest against the meeting, which was obviously aimed at benefiting the Arab residents of Jerusalem? Activists belonging to Fatah, Abbas's faction: Shadi Mtour and Awad Salaymeh. The protesters gathered outside the Notre Dame Hotel, just across the street from the Old City's New Gate, and tried to prevent the businessmen from entering the premises.
Mtour claimed that the meeting organized by the US Consulate General was an attempt to "bypass the Palestinian leadership" in Ramallah. "This is unacceptable because we support the official Palestinian position to boycott the US administration," he said. He claimed that some of the businessmen turned away when they encountered the protesters. However, Mtour expressed deep disappointment that others chose to ignore the protest and proceeded to attend the meeting. "Shame on them and anyone who agrees to compromise on Jerusalem," he added.
Salaymeh, for his part, accused the Palestinian participants of promoting "normalization" with Israel and the US. The US and Israel, he said, are "two sides of the same coin."
Just in case no one noticed: both Mtour and Salaymeh belong to Fatah, the faction that dominates and controls the Palestinian Authority. The entire existence of Fatah relies heavily on financial aid from the US, EU and other Western donors.
So, while the protesters in Ramallah were demanding that the US rescind its decision to cut off its funding to UNRWA, Abbas's men in east Jerusalem were trying to block a US-sponsored meeting to discuss ways of helping the Palestinian economy.
This was not the first incident in which Palestinians rejected an attempt by the Americans to help them. Last July, Palestinians thwarted a planned visit to the city of Nablus in the West Bank by a US consular delegation. The planned engagement was part of an ongoing US commitment to improve cooperation and expand economic opportunities for Palestinians. The visit was cancelled out of concern for the safety of the US delegates, after Palestinian protesters threatened to foil the meeting and called for boycotting the visiting delegation.
To add to the confusion regarding the Palestinian position towards the US, it was revealed this week that a senior Palestinian security and intelligence delegation had recently visited Washington for talks with CIA officials.
Abbas and the Palestinian leadership have not denied the report concerning the visit. But wait, haven't Abbas and his officials been boycotting the Trump administration since the US president's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December 2017?
Obviously, Abbas and the Palestinian leadership have no reasoned strategy regarding the US administration. Their conflicting message and actions are yet another sign of the absence of any real Palestinian vision. What is clear, however, is that the Palestinians' anti-US rhetoric will make it harder for them in the future to be considered by the Americans as reliable and trustworthy partners for any peace process with Israel.
Abbas and his top officials in Ramallah evidently want to have it both ways -- to continue their incitement against the Trump administration while being bankrolled by US taxpayer money. This incitement, meanwhile, is whipping up anti-US sentiment among Palestinians and many other Arabs, who now refer to the US as the #1 enemy of Arabs and Muslims. From here, the path to violence and terrorism against US citizens in the Middle East is very short.
Burning photos of Trump and senior US administration officials on the streets of Palestinian cities should be considered not only offensive, but effectively an act of war against Americans. Abbas and company would do well to learn that when they spit in the well they drink from, the water they draw will be bitter indeed.
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