T. Belman. We are witnessing the end of UNRWA and the PA. The US has cut $211 million in financing from UNRWA and the $130 million pledged doesn’t come close to covering the $400 million deficit expected this year. It will be gone by the end of the year.
Also the US has cut even more money from the PA budget. The PA too will be gone before the end of next year. The Europeans and the Gulf states are not interested in making up the shortfall. Yes they posture against Trump’s Deal of the Century but have no interest in picking up the tab of doing anything about it.
I predict that King Abdullah will be gone by the end of this year. Jordan will be the new home for the Palestinians and will be considered the Palestinian State.
“We are still in the dark and we do not know if our operations will run until the end of the year,” says UNRWA Director-General Philippe Lazzarini.
By AP and ILH Staff
UNRWA’s headquarters in the Gaza Strip | Photo: AP/Khalil Hamra
International donors pledged over $130 million Tuesday to the United Nations agency helping Palestinian refugees, an amount the organization’s head says is encouraging but not enough to keep operations running through the end of the year.
The UN Relief and Works Agency has faced a financial crisis since the United States pulled all funding in 2018, leaving the organization with a massive budgetary shortfall.
Agency Director-General Philippe Lazzarini told reporters following a virtual fundraising conference that despite the “very strong expression of support” by international donors, “we are still in the dark and we do not know if our operations will run until the end of the year.”
He said the donations covered only a fraction of the roughly $400 million budget gap the agency is facing.
UNRWA was established to aid the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes during the Arab war to eradicate the newly founded State of Israel in 1948. The agency provides food, education, health care, and other services for Palestinian refugees and their descendants – now numbering some 5 million – in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Judea and Samaria, Gaza, and east Jerusalem.
Lazzarini said there was no intention at this time to cut any of UNRWA’s core services, but “in reality, there is nothing left to cut without impacting the scope and the quality of the services.”
The US, once UNRWA’s largest donor, pulled support in 2018 triggering a financial crisis and forcing other donors to plug an approximately $211 million hole in the agency’s $1.2 billion budget.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was imperative that the international community “continue in the effort to make UNRWA funding sustainable, predictable, and sufficient.”
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Ted, from your pen and website to Hashem’s eye. I fervently wish this to happen exactly as you describe. Thanks.
American and international antisemites kept the UNRWA afloat!
“The US, once UNRWA’s largest donor, pulled support in 2018 triggering a financial crisis and forcing other donors to plug an approximately $211 million hole in the agency’s $1.2 billion budget.”
So the Arabs created the problem 72 years ago and since then it has been America and the rest of us picking up the bill. A fool and his money is easily parted, as the saying goes.