ISRAEL/PALESTINE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The new Palestinian prime minister on Tuesday [4-16-19] accused the United States of declaring ‘financial war’ on his people and said an American peace plan purported to be in the works will be ‘born dead.’ In his first interview with the international media since taking office over the weekend, Mohammad Shtayyeh laid out plans to get through the financial crisis he has inherited and predicted that the international community, including U.S. allies in the Arab world, would join the Palestinians in rejecting President Donald Trump’s expected peace plan…Shtayyeh, a British-educated economist, takes office at a difficult time for the Palestinians, with his government, the Palestinian Authority, mired in a dire financial crisis. The PA administers autonomous zones in the West Bank. The Trump administration has slashed hundreds of millions of dollars of aid, including all of its support for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. Israel has also withheld tens of millions of dollars of tax transfers to punish the Palestinians for their ‘martyrs’ fund,’ a program that provides stipends to the families of Palestinians imprisoned or killed as a result of fighting with Israel.”
–Joe Federman, “Mohammad Shtayyeh, new Palestinian prime minister, says ‘no Arab partners for Trump’,” USA Today, April 16, 2019 4:20 pm