Washington to cut aid to Palestinian Authority

Us officials say move stems from PA's 'unhelpful' actions but not linked to current escalation in violence.

The US secretary of state John Kerry met Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas in Amman on October 24, 2015. Carlo Allegri / Reuters

Washington will reduce its economic aid to the Palestinian Authority in the next fiscal year as a response to what a US official said were “unhelpful actions” by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’ government.

Confirmation of the punitive move came as US secretary of state John Kerry concluded a trip to the Middle East in part aimed at defusing Israeli-Palestinian tensions amid a surge of violence sparked by increasing right-wing Israeli activism around the status quo of the Al Aqsa compound in Jerusalem.

A US official travelling with Mr Kerry to Amman on Saturday said the decision to cut economic aid was made in the spring and was not directly related to the current crisis.

“There were several factors contributing to this decision, including unhelpful actions taken by the Palestinians and constraints on our global assistance budget,” the official said, according to AFP.

The depth of the cut to the US$370 million (Dh1.36bn) in economic aid that had been earmarked for the Palestinian Territories in 2016 was not confirmed by the official, but the Al Monitor news website reported that there would be an $80m reduction.

The overwhelmingly pro-Israel US congress has been increasing pressure on the administration in recent days to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority over what a recent resolution termed “incitement” against Jewish Israelis, including statements that Israel sought to change the status quo at the Al Aqsa site that is sacred to both Jews and Muslims. The House foreign affairs committee unanimously endorsed the resolution.

The Barack Obama administration has called on both sides to not engage in inflammatory rhetoric. The criticism, however, has been largely aimed at Palestinian officials, and the White House refused to directly condemn remarks last week by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming that Jerusalem’s Palestinian grand mufti during the Second World War convinced Adolf Hitler to carry out the holocaust against Europe’s Jews.

The statement was widely dismissed and ridiculed.

The latest upsurge in violence began last month after an increasing number of hardline Jewish groups visited Al Aqsa compound that sits atop the Western Wall – the holiest site in Judaism – as part of a campaign to force prayer access that was supported by members of the Netanyahu government.

The visits led to accusations by Palestinians that Israel was seeking to upend the status quo of the golden-domed Haram Al Sharif, which is an evocative symbol for Palestinians of their quest for nationhood. The holy site in occupied East Jerusalem was captured from Arab forces in 1967, but Jordan has been the custodian of the site since a 1994 peace deal with Israel.

Palestinian protesters began clashing with Israeli security forces around the site, and the violence quickly escalated, with Palestinians accusing the Israelis of using brutal tactics against protesters.

Since mid-September 53 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli forces and civilians. Israel alleges that more than half of them were carrying out stabbing attacks at the time. Ten Israelis have been killed.

In the West Bank on Sunday, a Palestinian woman was shot dead in Hebron by Israeli security forces. Police said she was “neutralised” after she had been acting suspiciously near border police and when asked to identify herself, had pulled out a knife and started shouting.

Another Palestinian was seriously wounded when he was shot several times by an Israeli settler while picking olives, according to Palestinian security sources.

Also in the West Bank, one Israeli was stabbed and wounded by “two assailants disguised as ultra Orthodox [Jewish] men” who shot at them before they fled the scene, the army said.

Mr Kerry met with Mr Netanyahu in Berlin on Thursday, and with Mr Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah in Amman on Saturday to try and defuse the violence that threatens to lead to a major bout of civil unrest.

The sides agreed in principle to a plan to install surveillance cameras around the site, as a means of proving Israel is not seeking to increase a physical Jewish presence at Al Aqsa. But no details about who would monitor the cameras or when the plan would go into place have been announced.

Palestinian officials voiced scepticism on Sunday. “This is a new trap,” Palestinian foreign minister Riyad Al Maliki said on Voice of Palestine radio, saying that Israel would use the system to monitor Muslim worshippers.

“There will not be calm without political prospects to definitively end the occupation,” said Nabila Sheath, a Fatah official in the West Bank told AP.

The reported $80m reduction in US aid will contribute the PA’s ongoing budget crisis, but will not be key. Only around one quarter of its budget comes from foreign aid, with the rest made up of tax revenues from Israel that are regularly frozen, including $700m withheld this year.

As a result, the Palestinian Authority has remained on the brink of collapse, but has always been brought back just enough from the precipice by Israel and outside donors to survive.

“The PA has been facing enormous budgetary problems for years, causing a great deal of concern about PA sustainability,” said Nathan Thrall, senior analyst with the Middle East and North Africa Programme of the International Crisis Group. “But at the end of the day the interests in maintaining it – including and especially Israel’s interest – have been too strong.”

“There is nothing inconsistent about freezing money from time to time and keeping Palestinians in a state of dependency,” he added. “Hungry people feel more dependent than sated ones.”

* With additional reporting from Agence France-Presse