Global Geopolitical Series: Fatah says won’t surrender Jerusalem despite Trump’s aid threat

Fataḥ, which was formerly known as the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, and currently is a Palestinian nationalist political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) defied President Trump’s threat to withdraw millions of dollars’ worth of aid to Palestine and announced that Jerusalem is not for sale. Earlier this week, President Trump tweeted, “It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue... ...peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”

After this tweet, United States’ UN ambassador Nikki Haley said, “The President has basically said that he doesn’t want to give any additional funding, or stop funding, until the Palestinians are agreeing to come back to the negotiating table…..What we saw with the resolution was not helpful to the situation. We're trying to move for a peace process, but if that doesn't happen, the president is not going to continue to fund that situation…… We very much still want to have a peace process, nothing changes with that. The Palestinians now have to show the world they want to come to the table," Haley said. "As of now, they're not coming to the table, but they ask for aid. We're not giving the aid, we're going to make sure they come to the table and we want to move forward with the peace process." 

Despite the threat, Fatah said that it would not accept Washington as a mediator in the peace process and sit down for talks with Israel. Azzam al-Ahmed, a member of Fatah's Central Committee told Princeton University Students Wednesday that the Palestinian leadership will never give up Jerusalem and will reject US mediation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, no matter the coercion by the United States. He said, “All the money of the world will not make us surrender”, adding that his would be nation is “fighting an open political battle with the US and will not accept, under any condition, the US as a partner in a peace process before it reverses its Jerusalem decision.”