[Netanyahu: I told American UN envoy Nikki Haley UNRWA should be dismantled]
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has combated calls to shut down for some time, but Trump and Haley’s latest threats to slash funding is the most serious threat to Palestinians yet
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration threatened to cut U.S. funding to the Palestinians on Tuesday amid the crisis in the peace process following U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Both the president and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley made such threats, though with slightly different messaging.
Haley, speaking at a press conference in New York, answered a question about American funding to UNRWA, the United Nations’ Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. The agency is responsible for supporting millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. It supports more than five million people in the region, with the United States as its largest sponsor for years.
Trump, addressing the issue of Palestinian aid in a tweet, didn’t mention UNRWA but rather spoke generally about funding to the Palestinians, saying that the United States “gives them hundreds of millions of dollars” but gets “no respect.” He also tied the funding to the Palestinians’ willingness to engage in American-led peace talks with Israel. The Palestinian Authority has declared its refusal to work with the Trump administration in light of its decision recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but expressed willingness to negotiate under the mediation of other international players such as Russia and the European Union.
All of this raises the following question – how much funding does the United States in fact give the Palestinians, and if it were cut, what would be the consequences?
With regards to UNRWA, the United States is indeed the most prominent donor to the organization. In 2016, according to UNRWA’s donor charts, the United States gave $152 million directly to the agency, and contributed another $216 to projects related to the agency’s work. Overall, the United States is listed as providing $368 to UNRWA’s operations, about a quarter of the agency’s entire budget.
If the United States stopped giving that money, however, the result won’t necessarily pressure the Palestinian Authority. UNRWA’s work is much more influential in areas not controlled by the PA, such as Gaza and the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, than in the West Bank.
The agency does, however, operate schools in the West Bank, which means that a massive cut to its budget wouldn’t go unnoticed in the Palestinian Authority’s territories. The agency would likely ask other countries, both in Europe and in the Arab world, to make up for the missing funds.
Cutting a quarter of the agency’s budget could increase the likelihood of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Israel has called in the past to shut down UNRWA, claiming that the agency prolongs the suffering of Palestinian refugees and their descendants by allowing Arab countries to avoid giving them full civil rights and economic opportunity.
Trump’s tweet suggested, however, that he was looking at cutting not just the U.S. UNRWA budget, but general funding to the Palestinians.
A Congressional report from December 2016 stated that on average, ever since the Palestinian Authority’s creation following the Oslo process in 1993, the United States has invested $400 million a year in the Palestinians. Most of this money has not gone directly to the PA, but rather to projects in the West Bank and in Gaza supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The report stated that the United States was due to invest $363 million in the Palestinian territories in 2017, with the vast majority of the sum going to USAID programs, and an approximate $36 million to directly support the Palestinian Authority’s security forces. With regards to such support of Palestinian security forces, which work in coordination with Israel to stop terror attacks, the report mentions that they may have also received “covert” funding from the United States without providing more details.
These days, Congress is considering legislation that would significantly cut funding to the Palestinians through USAID programs, called the “The Taylor Force Act.” The bill, named after an American citizen who was murdered in a terror attack in Tel Aviv in 2016, aims to cut U.S. funding to the Palestinians – except a number of programs such as hospitals in East Jerusalem, water projects and vaccination programs – as long as the Palestinian Authority continues paying salaries to convicted terrorists who are sitting in Israeli jails.
The Taylor Force Act, it should be noted, does not affect the budget allocated to the Palestinian security forces. While Israel supports the bill, it would likely oppose cuts to the funding given to the Palestinian security forces that work with Israeli counterparts on a regular basis and help maintain relative calm in the West Bank.
The bottom line is that the budget to USAID programs in the West Bank has already been facing a very real threat, long before Trump’s tweet, because of the Taylor Force Act. The budget to the Palestinian security forces is unlikely to be slashed – not even by the current administration – because it serves Israeli and American security interests. Though it would hurt Palestinians in Gaza and neighboring countries more than Abbas’ government in the West Bank, he United State’s potential cut to UNRWA’s funding is the largest threat Palestinians face.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Coincidence I actually liked Perry Mason, But Burr himself was a different kettle of fish. He visited his home town once, New Westminster B.C. where I had a business for about 15 years. He’d lived around the corner, I passed it every day, a nice house. Well one day the Committee of Welcome invited me to be one of them, be on the grandstand etc, I WAS flattered…appreciated at last… But then they said the wanted $100 contribution for “expenses”..so “alas” I enjoyed his visit vicariously. They wanted to turn the house into a museum but Burr wouldn’t cough up a single cent towards this noble idea, and he left town in bad odium. “Alack.”……
@ Sebastien Zorn:
She’s not a friend, only met her a few times-in Israel. (She was written up big by Jerusalem Post in 2009). Her husband, my cousin, was a friend, Superintendent of the Grace D’Art hospital in Montreal in the 1960s 70s. I was surprised to meet him in the Laniado Hospital in Natanya, when my first child was being born. He told me that the Quebec Govt. had insisted on all professionals be able to conduct interviews etc in fluent French within 2 years…so there was a prompt exodus from Quebec. It was his grandfather-my late mother’s uncle- whom I recently mentioned as being buried on the Mt. of Olives.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
A few things you should know…..Napoleon’s “umbrage”, was against Voltaire’s treatment of the subject. It was a PLAY. He may have had a certain admiration for Muhammed, but it had no effect on his subsequent actions. Juan Cole, who specialised In the History of Egypt and an acknowledged expert, said that Ali Bonaparte was fake, purely baloney, because without Egypt the French couldn’t control the British route to India, the purpose of the invasion. Boney thought the way to vital Egyptian support was to admire Islam etc. It didn’t work.
Bonaparte and Bourrienne, his confidant and secretary (who SHOULD know) say that Ali Bonaparte didn’t convert, didn’t pray, never went to a mosque, the whole schtick was for political reasons. He invaded Egypt around July 1898, finally left in August 99. In that time he was in Palestine and Syria proper, with battles, and more battles. Altogether about 7-8 months in Egypt, although the French were there another couple of years.
Boney tried a terrific gamble with huge preparation and plans, which failed. The most important thing from the Egyptian jaunt was The Rosetta Stone. All the time he was in the Levant there were wars, uprisings and battles against the population, because the Ottoman Empire took a hand.and was sending armies to support the local population who even joined with the Mamluks whom they hated..What time he wasn’t preparing for fighting, he was drawing up proclamations and more proclamations and more…. It was a hectic helter-skelter period.
If you need links, just look it up.
So Aly Bonaparte, in the words of that mid. 20th cent. broadcaster,…”as he sailed across the sunset seas bid a fond farewell to the land he loved so well”…….
But this subject is C-L-O-S-E-D, although it seems to have no ending. That’s O.K. too but should transfer to Chit Chat.@ Sebastien Zorn:
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Thank you but unlike you my few ailments are physical, unlike yours…..
I have have only ..maybe 25 medical close relatives (some not alive now) My mother’s cousin is a famous neurologist in Saskatoon, maybe he can help you. My 2 uncles were doctors, and 2 of their children. Medically, I’m very well connected. Oh yes, My dear late Brother was a dr. too. and 9-10 of his large circle of friends. In those days it was all they strived for. This was Dublin in the 30s remember not USA in the 80s.
Another first cousin and wife in Liverpool were drs. and their 4 children today are too. Sorry… only one mental specialist already mentioned..
@ Sebastien Zorn:
A few things you should know…..Napoleon’s “umbrage”, was against Voltaire’s treatment of the subject. It was a PLAY. He may have had a certain admiration for Muhammed, but it had no effect on his subsequent actions. Juan Cole, who specialised In the History of Egypt and an acknowledged expert, said that Ali Bonaparte was fake, purely baloney, because without Egypt the French couldn’t control the British route to India, the purpose of the invasion. Boney thought the way to vital Egyptian support was to admire Islam etc. It didn’t work.
Bonaparte and Bourrienne, his confidant and secretary (who SHOULD know) say that Ali Bonaparte didn’t convert, didn’t pray, never went to a mosque, the whole schtick was for political reasons. He invaded Egypt around July 1898, finally left in August 99. In that time he was in Palestine and Syria proper, with battles, and more battles. Altogether about 7-8 months in Egypt, although the French were there another couple of years.
Boney tried a terrific gamble with huge preparation and plans, which failed. The most important thing from the Egyptian jaunt was The Rosetta Stone. All the time he was in the Levant there were wars, uprisings and battles against the population, because the Ottoman Empire took a hand.and was sending armies to support the local population who even joined with the Mamluks whom they hated..What time he wasn’t preparing for fighting, he was drawing up proclamations and more proclamations and more…. It was a hectic helter-skelter period.
If you need links, just look it up.
So Aly Bonaparte, in the words of that mid. 20th cent. broadcaster,…”as he sailed across the sunset seas bid a fond farewell to the land he loved so well”…….
But this subject is C-L-O-S-E-D, although it seems to have no ending. That’s O.K. too but should transfer to Chit Chat.
Thrills and Spills! Watch! Titanic Battle of HIstory Geeks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpFSJhQ_30c
@ Edgar G.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiuW_XGU-jY
Ah, so you have a friend. How handy. I also have a friend who is an MD. If you are not feeling well, by all means, let me know your symptoms and I will ask my friend for your diagnosis and prescription.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Do tell, I wouldn’t have known it if you hadn’t detailed it so well. I must say I don’t know what you’re talking about but then you do that a lot. I notice that you are not answering my post. When I was doing Law we called it studying. When I was doing boxing, we called it training. Studying for cerebral subjects. Training, for greyhounds and sportsmen… I spend years in a lawyers office and at court. I wasn’t “training, I was “doing”….
Don’t presume that everyone but you is ignorant.
I have a cousin, who had been History Prof at C .U,N,Y. for about 40 years now living in Israel but commuting. Perhaps I can ask her whatever you’re worried about. She’s written many books on a variety of subjects so I suppose she might measure up to your super-dooper standards.
Iv’e heard o’ footnotes….somewhere…. the little things at the bottom of a page so small that nobody bothers to read them . lots of them in William Whiston’s translation of Josephus’ Antiquities. I read them all, so I know about footnotes,. My Geneva Bible has lots of margin notes, I’ve read them too.
Now where were we…..? You were gratuitously instructing me in something…I’ve forgotten what…. Was it how to suck eggs…..?
From the way the Progressives, led by the Black Lives Matter terrorists (If the Smith Act of 1940 hadn’t been gutted in 1956 by the Supreme Court, they’d have been in prison for advocating cop killing) threatened to burn down the country if Zimmerman wasn’t convicted before the Prosecution had even finished their preliminary investigation, you’d think they got their idea of how the legal system is supposed to work from Perry Mason.
But, then again, I suppose they had to to get airtime before the commercial.
So, what was the deal with the Dreyfus Trial? I mean, they didn’t even have TV back then, right? Or at least, not High Definition. (You notice, I didn’t say, “color” considering an audience that can’t even imagine tolerating black and white, much less silent.)
Incidentally, the very process I found fascinating in History, I found deadly in watching entire trials on Court TV in the 80s or 90s. Weeks long hearings to establish whether a particular ball point pen was blue or black.
Much more enjoyable was Matlock or its template, Perry Mason:
3 minutes before the end of the show:
Mason to minor Witness on Stand: Do you want me to bring that person (in the audience) to the stand to testify that he saw you at that hotel that night.
Witness: No, No, I confess, I confess.
or even better. From “Lady and the Mob” Bette Davis and Fay Bainter (1930s).
Big tough Mobster tied up in chair: (snarling defiantly) You won’t get anything out of me, I’ve been worked over by the best.
LIttle Old Lady (Fay Bainter): Let me try. (reaches into purse.)
Big tough Mobster tied up in chair: No, No, not castor oil! I’ll talk! I’ll talk.!!!
@ Edgar G.:
It doesn’t work that way. Training in history is like training in law. You have to learn how to prove and defend everything from the outset. Things you think are certain may, in fact, not be. That’s why almost every sentence is footnoted or accompanied with a quote. Now that nearly everything is on the internet, it makes it much easier. History professors with university internet access rely heavily on internet resources like JStore.
Now, I don’t know if if escaped your attention, but I used the one article that you provided to support your argument to find examples to refute it.
Incidentally, his Imperial Majesty’s endorsement of Islam for the Muslims of Egypt was apparently sincere. He took umbrage at Voltaire’s play against it late in life on Elba. No conflict there.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Just mention the parts that you doubt and I’ll endeavour to educate you.
@ Edgar G.:
Naturally, you don’t have to quote anything. We’ll just take your word for it.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
That last part was just tooo jolly. I could hear sleigh bells ringing, and hearty HO-HO-HOs coming from the clouds. (However alla tag ist nicht Yomtov) Yes, I had quite a problem getting it across that many items posted here about poor old Boney were, in fact, not accurate. (being more polite this time) . One thing I forgot, with all the fuss and bother was that Ben Weider of Montreal was closely involved with Stenny the Mad Dentist from Denmark (I know it’s Sweden but Denmark fits better)
Instead of being a weight lifter he should have been a barber, with all that hairy nonsense. My cousin in Montreal told me about him many, many years ago and that he had a very good collection of Napoleonic memorabilia etc. I read a book or two of his I’d forgotten about, from the library.
But, as has been said many times, this subject is as C-L-O-S-E-D as Rush Limbaugh’s “60 Second Sale” and far be-it for me try to change that.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I just googled: India Times Israel and the following came up:
If you’ll pardon the wicked cut and paste.
Things are going well. Problems will be overcome. We have genuises at the helm, a friend in the White House and possibly in that Great White House In the Sky, as well, if you believe in that sort of thing.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Correction. The new deal takes effect in 2019 and then the cuts will be phased in gradually. Who knows, maybe Israeli companies will be able to take up the slack somewhere else in the meantime.
Israel is, after-all, one of the world’s startup capitals.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-usa-defence/israel-defense-sector-faces-big-hit-after-new-u-s-aid-agreement-idUSKCN11Q1VF
@ Edgar G.:
It is gradually phased out.
“Key among those is the gradual phasing out of a clause allowing Israel to spend 26.3 percent of the funds on its own defense sector, which competes actively with U.S. firms such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Raytheon.”
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Israel NOW has to spend all the money in the US for Military aid and etcs. but until then, previously Israel was allowed to spend about 25% of the aid in Israel, which is now eliminated. Fortunately this can be less damaging because Israel sells more military items to other countries now than before.
Will it be an embarrassment for Netanyahu on his trip later this month to India which has just cancelled purchase of $600 mill weaponry with no public explanation. The way the PM operates I would not be surprised of he comes back with a $700+ mill order.
@ yamit82:
I agree with you, so I am sure the following was mere coincidence.
https://www.infowars.com/10-times-that-god-has-hit-america-with-a-major-disaster-after-the-u-s-attempted-to-divide-the-land-of-israel/
@ yamit82:
Israel only gets military aid, all of which has to be spent here, phased in over 10 years from last year. Non-military aid was ended some time ago. Before, 75 percent had to be spent here. And most of it only serves to stifle Israeli industry and make Israel more dependent on the U.S.
The United States has given more than $4 billion to UNRWA since it was founded in the early 50s. In Israel’s first crucial years, the U.S. gave Israel no aid, and then a pittance of non-military aid. Serious aid — with lots of strings, and only Trump and only now is demanding anything of the Palestinians — only began after Israel won the Six Day War. Alone and unaided.
President Eisenhower tried to ban contributions to Israel and even wanted to get the UN to do it to get Israel to withdraw from Egypt in 1956 but he was stopped by Senator Lyndon Johnson. He wanted and got a deal that led to withdrawal and security guarantees.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
American aid in dollars to the Palestinians per-capita is greater than the aid given to Israel.
@ Cathy:
There has always been hurricanes, earthquakes and forest fires since before there was as USA even before the first native Indian arrived from wherever… attributing natural disasters to behavior of individuals or nations based on supernatural intervention is silliness.
A few years ago the US announced it was cracking down on how the US funds were being spent by the PA, and tied the funding to certain projects. So how is it that at least some is still going to Abbas to pay terrorists to kill Jews? I don’t know why this is handled like some benign issue when the money has blood of Jews on it. It shouldn’t matter how the poor Gazans will suffer without their UNWRA propaganda schools, vaccines etc. It should be a moral matter – the US should want to have nothing to do with funding the murders of any innocent men, women and children. Cut the funding totally and let Gd sort it out. Failure to do so will continue to bring bad karma on the US, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, mass shootings etc. etc. etc.
Congressional Research Service
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22967.pdf
Well, we see how well that has worked.
As with Pakistan.
Trump: ‘No More’ Aid to Pakistan, ‘They Have Given Us Nothing but Lies and Deceit’
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/01/01/trump-no-more-aid-to-pakistan/
(good Breitbart article but it could have mentioned that Bin Laden had been hiding in plain sight in Pakistan for years, as another example.)
all funding to agencies caused by other sources should be financed by the source that created the need. u s of a did not create nor cause so called arab refuges. in the 1st place the refuge status was caused by the arab countries that attacked ISRAEL, 2nd u n has continued to allow the situation to get out of hand. u s of a has no reason to finance a problem bush etc created with so called road map. now back to sleep.