Trump turns screws as PLO creates fake news on Jerusalem and refugees

Negotiations to conclude the "two state solution", the creation of a 22^nd Arab state with Jerusalem as its capital, in addition to the Arab state of Jordan created in 78% of former Palestine in 1946, ended in April 2014 after unsuccessful negotiations spanning 20 years.

Other solutions now need to be explored that should involve Jordan and possibly Egypt negotiating with Israel to return to these two existing Arab states territory once occupied by them in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), East Jerusalem and the Gaza District between 1948 and 1967.

2. Cutting US financial aid to refugees in the West Bank and Gaza

PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi declared:

The rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale. There is no glory in constantly bullying and punishing a people under occupation. The U.S. administration has already demonstrated meanness of spirit in its collusion with the Israeli occupation and its theft of land and resources; now it is exercising economic meanness by punishing the Palestinian victims of this occupation.

Ashrawi ignored the following facts:

• The West Bank currently has 775,000 registered "refugees"m around a quarter of who live in 19 refugee camps, all of which have been under full PLO administrative control since 1993 as designated by the Oslo Accords.
• Gaza has 1.3 million registered "refugees", of who 500000 currently live in 8 refugee camps, all of which have been under Hamas governance since 2007.
• Many of these camps and their inhabitants date back to 1949. Severe overcrowding problems, high rates of unemployment, personal safety and poor infrastructure are common to them all.

The PLO and Hamas have maintained this discriminatory two-tiered refugee segregation system in both Gaza and the West Bank for the last ten years.

The failure to close these camps and integrate their residents into the general Gazan and West Bank Arab populations is a damning indictment of Hamas and the PLO.

Expecting Trump to pick up the tab whilst the PLO continues these inhumane practices for crass political purposes is arrogant and unwarranted.

Trump has made it clear these funds will go to relieving genuine refugee distress in other parts of the world.

The PLO's outright refusal to negotiate with Israel on Trump's long-awaited peace plan - inflamed by these latest false claims – only ensures the PLO's increasingly-rapid slide into political irrelevance.