Top U.N. official slams cuts to aid for Palestinian refugees
JERUSALEM — The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees suggested that the United States slashed his budget early this year to punish the Palestinians for their criticism of the American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but he warned that the Palestinian refugee issue will not go away.
The comments by Pierre Kraehenbuehl came amid signs that the U.S., with Israeli support, is aiming to abolish the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in an apparent attempt to remove one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the negotiating agenda.
“One cannot simply wish 5 million people away,” Kraehenbuehl, commissioner of the UNRWA, said.
In January, the U.S., the largest donor to the agency, slashed some $300 million from its annual contribution to UNRWA, prompting what Kraehenbuehl called an unprecedented financial crisis.
And on Friday, Trump administration announced that it had cut more than $200 million in bilateral aid to the Palestinians, following a review of the funding for projects in the West Bank and Gaza, the State Department said. The announcement does not include some $65 million in frozen U.S. funding for UNRWA.
Friday’s decision follows a similar decision last week in which the State Department announced that it was redirecting $230 million in aid that had been planned for stabilization programs in liberated areas of Syria. In that case, however, the department said the loss of U.S. funding would be more than offset by other nations, including Saudi Arabia, which announced a $150 million contribution for Syria stabilization.
Although Kraehenbuehl has made up some of UNRWA’s deficit by raising money from other countries, the agency still lacks more than $200 million. It recently laid off more than 100 people in the Gaza Strip and cut back the hours of 500 other employees. The upcoming school year for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children across the Middle East has been threatened.
Kraehenbuehl said he was caught off guard by the American decision, which came just weeks after he had held what he described as a successful meeting with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and chief Mideast adviser.
He said he believes it is connected to the uproar over the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December. The Palestinians, who seek East Jerusalem as their capital, condemned the decision and severed nearly all ties with the Americans.
And privately, there are signs that the American agenda runs deeper and that the Trump administration seeks to abolish UNRWA altogether.
In an internal email recently published by Foreign Policy magazine, Kushner called for a “sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA.”
Also Friday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Israeli gunfire wounded 50 Palestinians protesting along the border with Israel, and dozens more were treated for tear gas inhalation. Israeli fire has killed at least 168 Palestinians, most of them protesters, since weekly demonstrations organized by the Islamist militant group Hamas began in March.