The United States Government has announced the immediate halt to all funding for a United Nations agency in charge of providing for millions of Palestinian refugees across the middle-east.
As expected, Palestinian Authority officials have been highly critical of the deceision by the US Government calling it a flagrant assault against the Palestinian people.
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According to Al-Jazeera, the US Government, a major Israeli ally announced that it was stopping its funding to the United Nations Relief Works and Agency (UNRWA) after determining the organisation to be an “irredeemably flawed operation”.
Excerpts of the statement by the US Government read;
“UNRWA’s “endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years. The administration has carefully reviewed the issue and determined that the United States will not make additional contributions to UNRWA.”
This fresh cut in funding comes barely a week after the US Government also announced that it was reducing its economic aid to Palestinian refugees by about $200m.
Reacting to the funding cuts, Palestinian Authority spokesperson Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters news agency;
“The consecutive American decisions represent a flagrant assault against the Palestinian people and a defiance of UN resolutions. Such 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.”
Al-jazeera reporter on ground in the US capital notes that the funding cut most likely worsen an already dire situation in parts of the Palestinian territories, in Gaza most especially.
He further opines that the US Government was justifying the action on the grounds that the funding is being mismanaged and the UN agency was wasteful in its spending as well as being largely inefficient.
Several international observers also opined that the latest move by the US is part and parcel of the deceision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and a great exertion of effort by the Trump administration to really affect some radical changes and try to re-set the table in the Middle East.
UNRWA was established in 1949 after 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes by Zionist paramilitaries in the run-up to the establishment of the state of Israel.
The agency currently provides services to five million Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.