Trump again threatens to cut off aid to Palestinians

threatened to cut off aid to the Palestinians on Thursday if their leaders don't agree to peace talks with Israel, a hardline negotiating tactic that will do little to rebut the notion he's abandoned US neutrality in the long-simmering Middle East dispute.

Speaking ahead of talks with Israel's prime minister on the sidelines of the economic summit in Davos, Trump said Palestinians had disrespected the United States by not agreeing to meet with Vice President Mike Pence during his trip to the region last week.

And he declared Jerusalem "off the table" in negotiations after he declared the disputed city the capital of Israel last year.

They're going to have to want to make peace," Trump said, "or we're going to have nothing to do with them any longer."

"We'll see what happens with the peace process but respect has to be shown to the US or we'll just not going any further," he said.

The President's remarks sparked renewed debate about whether the US is still able to play the role of mediator in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

And flatly contradictory comments by Trump and some of his senior officials on the status of Jerusalem are raising questions about the administration's peace plan, which remains a mystery to most of the players on both sides.

The President's comments amount to an escalation in tone toward the Palestinians, with whom he must work if he hopes to strike an elusive peace accord. Instead of drawing them to the negotiating table with offers, he has scaled up his threats of what will happen if they don't agree to talks.

Trump already drastically reduced US aid last week to a United Nations fund that provides assistance to Palestinian refugees, sending just $60 million of a pledged $125 million.

Analysts have said the fund -- which provides emergency relief, health care and education for 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring countries -- has helped quell further violence in the region. Trump questioned the value of the investment.

"We give them tremendous amounts, hundreds of millions of dollars. That money is on the table, because why should we do that as a country if they're doing nothing for us?" he said in Davos. "And what we want to do is help them. We want to create peace and save lives. And we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. But the money is on the table."

Palestinian officials reacted to Trump defiantly Thursday, arguing that the US has abandoned its role as an "honest broker."

"If Jerusalem is off the table, then America is off the table as well," President Mahmoud Abbas' official spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a phone call with CNN, reiterating that Palestinians no longer recognize the US as a mediator in any peace negotiations with Israel.

There will be no negotiations, Abu Rudeineh said, until the current American administration abides by international law and agrees to work toward a two-state solution, which would see a state of Palestine created along 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.