From Pakistan to Palestine, Donald Trump is set to turn the screws again. It is now obvious that in the reckoning of his administration, the threat to foreign assistance is a potent weapon of reprisal, indeed a means of leveraging. He has reinforced the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel with a threat to cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. More accurately, he has threatened to truncate the assistance towards a humanitarian effort. Viewed through that prism, Wednesday’s announcement, specifically the latest intervention in the Middle East peace process, is potentially far more damaging to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian camps run by UNRWA are home to the poorest and most disadvantaged. Indeed, the camps in such places as Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin on the West Bank and Gaza are inhabited by the most radicalised of the Palestinian factions. It was from these camps that the first and second intifadas emerged and where both Fatah and the Islamist group, Hamas, were born. They are places that pride themselves both on their resilience and on being the conscience of the Palestinian national movement. Ever since the second intifada, the weapons still held by the factions have largely remained inside these camps, and under the control of the Palestinian security forces helmed by President Mahmoud Abbas. The US President, given as he is to impetuous action, has betrayed a lack of understanding of the delicate dynamics that help maintain relative peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Though Pakistan will take a while to reflect on Mr Trump’s bluster, he may have rocked the Middle East boat fair and square.

The President and his advisers regard the moves at the UN Security Council and in the General Assembly to condemn the Jerusalem announcement as an escalation in the situation. It is hard not to wonder whether he has binned the conventional negotiating strategies used by past US administrations in the Middle East peace process as failures. The purported paradigm shift lends a new dimension to the theory and practise of international law. The working arrangement between UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority, fragile as it was, is bound to get destabilised. For years, international financial and technical support for the Palestinian bureaucracy has taken care of salaries and has supported NGOs working in key social sectors. This flow has underpinned the Palestinian Authority’s security cooperation with Israel, thereby checking the influence of Hamas on the West Bank. Indeed, that international support has spared the Palestinian Authority from a possible coup by the Hamas or “coup-proofed”, as the political scientist, Edward Luttwak, reacted on Wednesday. The US President has emitted a distressing signal ~ there is no peace process and no peace plan in the Middle East. Donald Trump has taken “care” of the essentials.