Actors Hugh Grant and Viggo Mortensen are among more than 25 celebrities and public figures expressing "horror" over U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to cut funding to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, an advocacy group said Thursday.
"The real target of this lethal attack is the Palestinian people themselves," the group said in a joint statement. "It has been launched with the clear aim of dismantling their rights, by dismantling the institution that is charged with protecting them."
Actresses Gillian Anderson, Olivia Wilde, Emma Thompson and Tilda Swinton were also among the signatories.
The letter was released by the Hoping Foundation, a London-based group that assists Palestinian children.
Expressing frustration with a freeze in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, Trump this month blamed the Palestinians for the deadlock and threatened to cut U.S. funding. Washington subsequently suspended a $65 million payment to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the agency that provides education, health care and other social services to over 5 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants scattered across the Middle East.
On Thursday, Trump said in Davos, Switzerland, that the Palestinians must return to peace talks to receive U.S. aid money. Trump said the Palestinians withhold aid to the Palestinians if they did not pursue peace with Israel, saying they had snubbed the United States by not meeting Vice President Mike Pence during a recent visit.
Trump, speaking after a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum, said he wanted peace. However, his remarks could further frustrate the aim of reviving long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian talks.
"When they disrespected us a week ago by not allowing our great vice president to see them, and we give them hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and support, tremendous numbers, numbers that nobody understands – that money is on the table and that money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace," Trump said.
A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the United States had taken itself "off the table" as a peace mediator since it recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
"Palestinian rights are not up to any bargain and Jerusalem is not for sale. The United States can't have any role unless it retreats its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital," spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh told Reuters.
The president of the Conference of European Rabbis, Moscow's Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, and Palestinian business delegate Fayyez Husseini, also said on Thursday that Trump's threat to withhold aid to Palestinians reflected Trump's "American First" approach and was "quite hurtful" toward Palestinians.
Goldschmidt asked what alternative there was to U.S. aid and what would replace the P.A. if it stopped functioning – "another 'Hamastan'?"
"I'm not sure what more is expected of the Palestinians. We have no infrastructure, no economy, no light at the end of the tunnel. What more is expected of us before we can get the beginning of hope? I would say, a better respect, and that this is the minimum wish of the Palestinian people," Husseini said.
The United States is the largest single donor to UNRWA, and the agency has launched a global fundraising appeal in hopes of closing the gap. In all, it provides hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the Palestinians.
"We stand for dignity for the most vulnerable, and we stand with Palestinian refugees who are facing a terrible moment," the statement said. The celebrities called on the U.N. chief to convene a conference to establish a stable funding system for the agency.
Meanwhile, the leaders of 21 international humanitarian groups urged the U.S. to reconsider its decision to withhold the funding to UNRWA, warning of "dire consequences" if funding is cut.
The groups said they are alarmed by the Trump administration's link between aid and political objectives.
This marks a "dangerous and striking departure from U.S. policy on humanitarian assistance," the groups wrote in an open letter to Washington's U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, published Thursday.
Haley has linked aid to the Palestinians to their willingness to resume negotiations with Israel.
