President Donald Trump surprised world leaders Thursday morning by tying U.S. aid to whether Palestinians return in a serious way to peace talks with Israel.

If the Palestinians decline, they will lose U.S. aid, the president announced while in Davos, Switzerland.

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Trump said the decades-long flow of hundreds of millions of dollars from American taxpayers is at risk if the Palestinians do not start negotiating.

“That money is on the table, and that money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace,” Trump said while meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Davos, Switzerland.

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Trump said the Palestinians’ refusal to talk to Vice President Mike Pence earlier in the week did not go unnoticed.

The Palestinian leadership is angry because the United States is moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

A “small version” of the embassy will open in 2019 while a larger one is planned, Trump said. But the embassy should not be an excuse for snubs and silence.

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“When they disrespected us a week ago by not allowing our great vice president to see them, and we give them hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and support, tremendous numbers, numbers that nobody understands — that money is on the table, and that money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace,” the president said.

The Trump administration has already said it will freeze $65 million in aid to Palestinian refugees. The money is run through the United Nations. Activist groups decried the move in a letter to the White House, saying Palestinian refugees from Syria to the Gaza Strip would suffer.

Talks on Israeli-Palestinian peace have frozen since the embassy announcement. Trump said Israel, too, should be prepared to concede some points in the peace talks in view of the embassy decision and U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as that nation’s historic capital.

“I want to say that this is a historic decision that will be forever etched in the hearts of our people.”

“You won one point,” said Trump to Netanyahu. “You’ll give up some points later in the negotiation, if there’s ever a negotiation.”

Netanyahu was happy to concede Trump’s point by praising the embassy move.

“I want to say that this is a historic decision that will be forever etched in the hearts of our people, for generations to come,” said Netanyahu, according to media reports of the meeting. “People say that this pushes peace backward. I say it pushes peace forward because it recognizes history, it recognizes the present reality, and peace can only be built on the basis of truth.”

PoliZette White House writer Jim Stinson can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.

(photo credit, homepage image: Palestinian Protest, CC BY 2.0, by Fibonacci Blue; photo credit, article image: Palestinian Protest, CC BY-SA 3.0, by Mustafa Bader)