The United States is ending funding for programs aimed at bringing Israelis and Palestinians together as part of a larger move to end U.S. aid provided to Palestinian civilians.
According to a report in The New York Times, the Trump administration has blocked funds allocated for meetings between Israelis and Palestinians, effectively shutting down the last remaining channel for Palestinian civilians to receive American aid.
Although Congress approved the funding in 2017, United States Agency for International Development officials reportedly told congressional aides the $10 million budget for coexistence programs between Palestinians and Israelis would not be allocated.
In a statement, Friday, USAID said funding for programs fostering coexistence between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs was set to continue.
While USAID was "currently unable to engage Palestinians in the West Bank and [the] Gaza [Strip] as a result of the administration's recent decision on Palestinian assistance," it was "continuing its support for civil society working on these issues within Israel," the statement said.
The move is the latest in a series of punitive measures taken by the Trump administration against the Palestinians, which so far has included Washington suspending its multimillion-dollar contribution to the U.N. aid agency that supports Palestinian refugees, shuttering the PLO's mission in Washington and recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. These moves have prompted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to refuse to engage with any of Trump's envoys.
In an interview with The New York Times Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner said that none of these measures had diminished the chances of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process being successful.
Kushner said that U.S. President Donald Trump's tougher policies had actually improved the chances for peace by stripping away the "false realities" that surround Middle East peacemaking.
Kushner lambasted the Palestinians for maligning the Trump administration in the wake of the aid cuts, saying that Palestinian leaders "deserved to lose aid after vilifying the administration."
"Nobody is entitled to America's foreign aid," he stated.
In the case of the Palestinians, Kushner argued, U.S. funding had "evolved into a decadeslong entitlement program with no plan to make them self-reliant."
Still, he insisted that the rift between Ramallah and Washington was not unbridgeable.
"In every negotiation I've ever been in, before somebody gets to 'yes,' their answer is 'no.'"
