Palestinian refugees welcome US move to restart aid

Palestinian refugees on Thursday welcomed the US announcement that it will renew humanitarian aid, marking a break with the Trump era.

President Joe Biden’s administration said on Wednesday that it will provide $235 million to the Palestinians and restart funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which assists 5.7 million registered Palestinian refugees.

It was the clearest sign yet of Biden’s apparent intent to repair ties with the Palestinians, who boycotted the Trump White House for most of his tenure, accusing him of pro-Israel bias.

“We are happy,” said Ahmed Odeh in Bethlehem’s Deheisheh refugee camp in the Israelioccupied West Bank. “The former American administration tried to stop these funds to the Palestinian people.”

“Any funding for the refugee camps and the refugees is out of good will and is good for us ... people are not working or making money, especially during the pandemic,” said Subhi Allian, 71, outside an UNRWA clinic in Far’a refugee camp near Tubas.

Most UNRWA-registered refugees are descendants of 700,000 Palestinians who were driven out of their homes or fled fighting in the 1948 war that led to Israel’s creation.

Many want the right to return to their families’ former lands in pre-1948 Palestine, lands which now lie in Israel. Israel rejects any such right as a demographic threat to its Jewish majority.

In a Twitter video late on Wednesday, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Ambassador to the US and the UN, voiced “disappointment and objection” about the renewal of funding to the refugee agency without reforming it.

The Biden plan will provide $150 million to UNRWA and agency officials hope it will lead to more donations from the US and others.