PALESTINIANS ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST BRACE FOR TRUMP AID CUTS
Millions relying on the UNRWA expect the worst as a reduced budget could destabilise struggling host countries
Mahmoud Al Qouqa cannot imagine life without the three sacks of flour, cooking oil and other staples he receives from the UN every three months.
Living with 25 relatives in a home in a teeming Gaza Strip slum, the meagre rations provided by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees are the last thing keeping his family afloat in a territory hit by years of poverty and conflict.
Even that could be in danger as the United States, the UNRWA’s biggest donor, threatens to cut funding.
“It will be like a disaster and no one can predict what the reaction will be,” said Mr Al Qouqa, 72.
Across the Middle East, millions of people who depend on the agency are bracing for the worst. The expected cut could also add instability to struggling host countries coping with spillover from other regional crises.
The agency was established after the 1948 war following the creation of Israel. About 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes.
The UN General Assembly has repeatedly renewed the agency’s mandate.
The original refugee camps have turned into concrete slums and more than five million refugees and their descendants now rely on the UNRWA for services including education, health care and food. The largest populations are in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, says the agency is perpetuating the conflict by helping to promote the idea that these people have the right of return to long-lost properties in what is now Israel.
“UNRWA is part of the problem, not part of the solution,” Mr Netanyahu said last week.
He said the Palestinians were the only group with their own refugee agency, and that the UNRWA should be abolished and its responsibilities taken over by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Some in Israel have even tougher criticism, accusing the agency of teaching hatred of Israel in its classrooms and tolerating or assisting Hamas militants in Gaza.
Blaming Palestinians for a lack of progress in Middle East peace efforts, the US president, Donald Trump, has threatened to cut assistance. The agency would be the first to be affected.
The US provides about US$355 million (Dh1.3bn) a year to the UNRWA, about a third of its budget.
Officials in Washington said this week that the government was preparing to withhold tens of millions of dollars from the year’s first contribution, cutting a planned $125m instalment by half or perhaps entirely. The decision would be announced within days.
Matthias Schmale, the agency’s director in Gaza, said Washington had not told it of any changes, but “we are worried because of the statements in the media and the fact that the money hasn’t arrived yet”.
Mr Schmale dismissed the Israeli criticisms, saying people who spread incitement or aid militants were isolated cases and are promptly punished.
He said Mr Netanyahu’s criticism should be directed at the UN General Assembly, which sets the agency’s mandate.
Any cut in aid could ripple across the region, with unintended consequences.
Gaza may be the most challenging of all of the agency’s operating areas. Two thirds of Gaza’s two million people qualify for services.
Its role is stretched by the poor state of the economy, which has been hit by three wars with Israel and an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since Hamas militants seized power more than a decade ago.
Unemployment is at 43 per cent and the poverty rate is 38 per cent, the Palestinian statistics office says.
“Nowhere else are we the biggest service provider for the population of the entire territory,” Mr Schmale said.
He said the agency provided food assistance to a million Gazans, calling it “an expression of collective shame for the international community”.
With more than 12,500 teachers, nurses and other staff, the UNRWA is Gaza’s largest non-government employer.
It is also involved in postwar rebuilding.
The situation in Gaza is evident from Mr Al Qouqa’s home, which is so cramped that the family has made sleeping spaces with wood boards and fabric.
Two men are unemployed. Two others are Hamas civil servants and are paid only intermittently by the cashstrapped movement.
Mr Al Qouqa is worried about his grandchildren: “If the UNRWA provides them with bread they can remain patient. But if it was cut, what will they become? They will become thieves, criminals and a burden on society.”
Many believe Hamas, which administers schools and social services in Gaza, will step in to fill the void.
Jordan, a crucial ally in the US-led battle against ISIL, is home to the largest number of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, with nearly 2.2 million people eligible for UNRWA services.
This has turned the UN agency into a major contributor to social welfare services in the country, which also hosts hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by war.
US aid cuts could raise the threat of instability in Jordan, which is grappling with a deteriorating economy hurt by the spillover from the conflicts in neighbouring Syria and Iraq.
More than a third of Jordan’s young people are without jobs, making them targets for recruitment by extremists.
Most of the Palestinians eligible for the agency’s services in Jordan hold Jordanian citizenship, and some argue that this has ended their refugee status. But most maintain that the UNRWA’s services are crucial to propping up an important ally.
Its services are also vital in Lebanon, where Palestinians are prohibited from working in skilled professions and owning property.
Camps in several Lebanese cities are ringed by concrete barriers and security forces use checkpoints to control who enters and leaves. A recent census found 175,000 Palestinian refugees or their descendants lived in the country.
About 32,000 Palestinians who were living in Syria fled to Lebanon, the UN agency says. In Syria, Palestinians could own property and work in all professions.
Balkees Hameed, 33, arrived in 2013 with her husband, two children and in-laws from Damascus, where their flat was damaged by rocket fire.
The family depends on UNRWA assistance to rent a one-bedroom flat in a ramshackle building in Beirut’s Bourj Al Barajneh camp.
Ms Hameed’s husband wipes tables at a restaurant outside the camp. She was painfully aware of the rumours coming out of Washington.
“We are already defeated and now they want to oppress us some more?” Ms Hameed said.
While more than 5 million Syrian refugees worldwide are entitled to assistance from the UN’s general refugee relief agency, Palestinians are barred from it because they are served by the UNRWA.
But the agency in Lebanon is chronically underfunded, and the wave of Palestinians arriving from Syria has strained its finances even further.
“What the UNRWA provides is not even a quarter of what a Palestinian refugee needs,” said Ramy Mansour, 34, who fled to Lebanon from the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus in 2013.
“We don’t want any assistance or anything, just return us to our country.”
We are already defeated and now they want to oppress us some more? BALKEES HAMEED Palestinian refugee who fled to Lebanon from Syria