US to Provide $60M in Palestinian Aid, Withhold $65M

WASHINGTON — 

The United States will give a U.N. agency $60 million in aid for Palestinians but will withhold a further $65 million "for future consideration," a U.S. official said Tuesday.

In keeping back some of the aid, Washington appeared to carry out a threat U.S. President Donald Trump made in a Twitter post on January 2 in which he said that Washington gives the Palestinians a lot of money and gets nothing back.

"They don't even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel ... with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?" Trump added in another tweet.

The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that will receive the money needed to be fundamentally re-evaluated "in the way it operates and the way it is funded."

While the official did not link the U.S. decision to Trump's tweet, he made a point often advanced by the U.S. president by saying the United States had been UNRWA's largest donor for decades and calling on other nations to do more.

"It is time other countries, some of them quite wealthy, step in and do their part to advance regional security and stability," the official said.

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