JERUSALEM (NYTIMES) - Palestinian officials denounced the Trump administration's cancellation of more than US$200 million (S$273 million) in aid, accusing Washington of "weaponising" humanitarian assistance by using it as a tool to coerce political concessions.

The aid cut, announced last Friday (Aug 24), was the latest in a series of measures apparently aimed at forcing the Palestinian leadership to return to the negotiating table with Israel while US officials work on a long-awaited peace proposal, the details of which remain opaque.

An earlier freeze by Washington of tens of millions of dollars of funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency, which assists Palestinian refugees, and the move in May of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the contested city of Jerusalem, had already infuriated the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Palestinians, who claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state, expressed defiance this weekend, blaming US President Donald Trump's administration for forsaking the role its predecessors had long sought as an honest broker in the dispute with Israel.

"This administration is dismantling decades of US vision and engagement in Palestine," Mr Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's general delegation to the United States, said in a statement.

"This is another confirmation of abandoning the two-state solution and fully embracing Netanyahu's anti-peace agenda," he added, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

"Weaponising humanitarian and developmental aid as political blackmail does not work."

Mr Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian official, said: "The Palestinian people and leadership will not be intimidated and will not succumb to coercion."

"The rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale," he added.

"There is no glory in constantly bullying and punishing a people under occupation."

The withdrawal of the assistance comes as the Trump administration considers cancelling nearly US$3 billion in foreign aid projects around the world.

The US State Department says it intends to redirect funds that were meant for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to higher-priority projects elsewhere.

During a visit to Israel last week, Mr John Bolton, President Trump's national security adviser, said there were no decisions yet about the details of the US peace plan or when it would be unveiled.

Referring to the US plan, Mr Netanyahu, who heads a right-wing government, many of whose ministers oppose a Palestinian state, said during a visit to Lithuania last Friday: "It may come, even though I don't see any urgency on the matter."

Palestinian officials said the aid withdrawal could affect many programmes of the US Agency for International Development, the principal body administering US foreign assistance in the West Bank and Gaza.

The agency oversees support for a wide range of issues in the Palestinian territories, including debt relief, economic growth, water and sanitation, education, health and governance.

Washington provided about US$290 million to the Palestinians in 2016 through the agency and has provided about US$5.2 billion in total since 1994.

The US also supplies funds for security assistance, public diplomacy and mine clearance operations.

The US Consulate General in Jerusalem recently announced that more than 1,000 Palestinian students had graduated in July from an 18-month programme to improve their English and community leadership skills. That programme costs more than US$2 million a year.

European Union support to the Palestinians amounted to nearly €359 million (S$570 million), or about US$416 million, in 2017. As well as humanitarian assistance, that money helps fund the salaries of Palestinian Authority employees.

Mr Omar Shaban, a Gaza-based analyst on political economy and director of PalThink for Strategic Studies, an independent group, said the aid cut would affect US bodies that have partnerships with tens of local Palestinian non-governmental organisations.

He said it will lead to layoffs and deal a "devastating blow" to local and international groups working on infrastructure projects like road-building.

Mr R. David Harden, a former mission chief in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for the US Agency for International Development, wrote on Twitter that the funding had been "a force for stability" and the cut would empower forces like Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza.

Mr Daniel B. Shapiro, who served as the US ambassador to Israel from 2011 to 2017, said that successive Israeli governments had seen "great value" in the US humanitarian assistance, in part because it saved Israel from shouldering the cost and also because it provided a more secure environment.

"This decision represents a terrible decision by Trump's team, which seems to think it will put pressure on the Palestinians to come to the table (it won't)," he wrote on Twitter.

In an additional blow to the Palestinians, Fifa, the global football governing body, last Friday banned Mr Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Football Association, from all football-related activity for a year for "inciting hatred and violence" over a planned exhibition match between Israel and Argentina that was cancelled in June.