{"id":13517,"date":"2018-09-01T16:26:16","date_gmt":"2018-09-01T16:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13517"},"modified":"2018-09-01T16:26:16","modified_gmt":"2018-09-01T16:26:16","slug":"us-halts-all-funding-to-un-body-helping-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13517","title":{"rendered":"US halts all funding to UN body helping Palestinians"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nWASHINGTON\/RAMALLAH: The United States on Friday halted all funding to a UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees in a decision further heightening tensions between the Palestinian leadership and the Trump administration.
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the decision as \u201ca flagrant assault against the Palestinian people and a defiance of UN resolutions.\u201d
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the business model and fiscal practices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) made it an \u201cirredeemably flawed operation.\u201d
\u201cThe administration has carefully reviewed the issue and determined that the United States will not make additional contributions to UNRWA,\u201d she said in a statement.
Nauert said the agency\u2019s \u201cendlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years.\u201d
The latest announcement comes a week after the administration said it would redirect $200 million in Palestinian economic support funds for programs in the West Bank and Gaza.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness voiced the agency\u2019s \u201cdeep regret and disappointment\u201d at the decision, which he said was surprising given that a December US funding agreement had acknowledged UNRWA\u2019s successful management.
\u201cWe reject in the strongest possible terms the criticism that UNRWA\u2019s schools, health centers, and emergency assistance programs are \u2018irredeemably flawed,\u2019\u201d Gunness added in a series of Twitter posts.
The 68-year-old agency says it provides services to about 5 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank and Gaza. Most are descendants of people who were driven out of their homes or fled the fighting in the 1948 war that led to Israel\u2019s creation.
US President Donald Trump and his aides say they want to improve the Palestinians\u2019 plight, as well as start negotiations on an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
But under Trump, Washington has taken a number of actions that have alienated the Palestinians, including the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital. That move was a reversal of longtime US policy and led the Palestinian leadership to boycott the Washington peace efforts being led by Jared Kushner, Trump\u2019s senior adviser and son-in-law.
The United States paid out $60 million to UNRWA in January, withholding another $65 million, from a promised $365 million for the year.
\u201cNOT PART OF THE SOLUTION\u201c
\u201cSuch a punishment will not succeed to change the fact that the United States no longer has a role in the region and that it is not a part of the solution,\u201d Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters.
He said \u201cneither the United States nor anybody else will be able to dissolve\u201d UNRWA.
In Gaza, the Islamist group Hamas condemned the USmove as a \u201cgrave escalation against the Palestinian people.\u201d
\u201cThe American decision aims to wipe out the right of return and is a grave USescalation against the Palestinian people,\u201d said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.
He told Reuters the \u201cUSleadership has become an enemy of our people and of our nation and we will not surrender before such unjust decisions.\u201d
Earlier on Friday, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Germany would increase its contributions to UNRWA because the funding crisis was fueling uncertainty. \u201cThe loss of this organization could unleash an uncontrollable chain reaction,\u201d Maas said.
UNRWA has faced a cash crisis since the United States, long its biggest donor, slashed funding earlier this year, saying the agency needed to make unspecified reforms and calling on the Palestinians to renew peace talks with Israel.
The last Palestinian-Israeli peace talks collapsed in 2014, partly because of Israel\u2019s opposition to an attempted unity pact between the Fatah and Hamas Palestinian factions and Israeli settlement building on occupied land that Palestinians seek for a state.
Nauert said the United States would intensify talks with the United Nations, the region\u2019s governments and international stakeholders that could involve bilateral US assistance for Palestinian children.
\u201cWe are very mindful of and deeply concerned regarding the impact upon innocent Palestinians, especially school children, of the failure of UNRWA and key members of the regional and international donor community to reform and reset the UNRWA way of doing business,\u201d she said.
Gunness told Reuters earlier in August that UNRWA\u2019s support would be needed as long as the parties failed to reach an agreement to end the crisis.
\u201cUNRWA does not perpetuate the conflict, the conflict perpetuates UNRWA,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is the failure of the political parties to resolve the refugee situation which perpetuates the continued existence of UNRWA.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON\/RAMALLAH: The United States on Friday halted all funding to a UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees in a decision further heightening tensions between the Palestinian leadership and the Trump administration.A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the decision as \u201ca flagrant assault against the Palestinian people and a defiance of UN resolutions.\u201dState Department…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":13518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}