TRUMP THREAT: U.S. WITHHOLDS $65 MILLION IN PALESTINIAN AID
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| Boxes containing aid from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) are seen ahead of their transfer to the Gaza Strip, inside the Kerem Shalom border crossing terminal between Israel and Gaza Strip January 16, 2018. REUTERS |
In announcing that
it would provide $60 million to the U.N. Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA)
while withholding a further $65 million for now, the U.S. State Department said
the aid group needed to make unspecified reforms.
Palestine Liberation
Organization official Wasel Abu Youssef immediately criticized the move,
casting it as a deliberate U.S. effort to deny the Palestinians their rights
and linking it to Trump’s widely criticized Dec. 6 decision to recognize
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
United Nations
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was unaware of any cut in aid but he
was “very concerned” about the possibility because it “is an important factor
of stability.”
UNRWA
Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl said in a statement that the reduced
U.S. contribution “threatens one of the most successful and innovative human
development endeavors in the Middle East.”
The decision to keep
back some money is likely to compound the difficulty of reviving
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and to further undermine Arabs’ faith that the
United States can act as an impartial arbitrator.
The last talks
collapsed in 2014, partly because of Israel’s opposition to an attempted unity
pact between the Fatah and Hamas Palestinian factions and to Israeli settlement
building on occupied land that Palestinians seek for a state, among other
factors.
“UNRWA has proven
time and again to be an agency that misuses the humanitarian aid of the
international community and instead supports anti-Israel propaganda,
perpetuates the plight of Palestinian refugees and encourages hate,” said Danny
Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Even if Washington
provided the additional $65 million, the $125 million total would be well below
the $355 million that a U.S. official said it gave UNRWA in the 2017 fiscal
year ended Sept. 30.
While saying the
decision would sustain schools and health services, State Department
spokeswoman Heather Nauert echoed Trump in calling on other nations to provide
more money because he believes the United States pays more than its share.
The State Department
wrote a letter notifying UNRWA of the decision, spokeswoman Nauert said. She
said that while UNRWA reforms were a condition of releasing more money, the aid
decision was “not aimed at punishing” anyone.
In a Twitter post on
Jan. 2, Trump said that Washington gives the Palestinians “HUNDRED OF MILLIONS
OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect.” Trump added that “with
the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of
these massive future payments to them?”
It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue...— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018
While U.S. officials did not link the decision to Trump’s tweet, they made a point often advanced by him, saying the United States had been UNRWA’s single largest donor for decades.
SOURCE: Reuters
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