Palestinians slammed with new aid cuts to US ‘co-existence’ programs
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Palestinians slammed with new aid cuts to US ‘co-existence’ programs
Palestinian Liberation Organization flags waved during a protest against the Jewish nation-state law in Tel Aviv. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
The US has dried up one of the last pools of aid money to Palestinians with its latest announcement in a string of massive Palestinian funding cuts.
By: Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News, September 18 2018
After the American administration ordered the USAID agency to cease its $10 million Conflict Management and Mitigation Program, which funneled money to Palestinian organizations, funding for security operations and multi-year programs may be the only US aid to Palestinians that remains .
AFP reported that a US embassy official said that the percentage that was to go to Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza would be “redirected” to “enhance” programs for Israeli Jews and Arabs alone. How much money that means, and to which programs, remains unknown.
According to the New York Times , this was the last aid money still left in America’s 2017 budget for Palestinian civilians, although money for Palestinian security operations was kept intact, as were funds that were promised in multi-year programs.
This is in line with the administration’s decision last month to “redirect” some $200 million that had been given annually in bilateral aid to Palestinians in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and another $25 million to Palestinian hospitals, including in eastern Jerusalem.
And all this happened right after President Trump turned off the remaining $300 million spigot in contributions to UNRWA, the United Nations agency set up to aid Palestinians refugees and all of their descendants throughout the Middle East. Critics maintain that UNRWA’s policy’s exaggerate the number of “refugees” to over five million people since Israel’s establishment, in contrast to the actual number of refugees created in the war of independence, which number in the tens of thousands.
This steady chopping off of funding is largely seen as a pressure tactic by the US administration to get the Palestinian Authority (PA) to finally sit down and negotiate with the Israelis so that the president’s team can finally unveil its “deal of the century” Mideast peace plan.
With regard to the elimination of funding, Jared Kushner – a key proponent of the aid cuts – told the Times recently, “Nobody is entitled to America’s foreign aid.”
The US has been by far the largest donor to the Palestinians over decades, but President Trump has made it clear on many different issues that just because something was done in a certain way for years doesn’t mean that it should keep being done that way – especially if there are no results in favor of American interests.
Trump reportedly told American Jewish leaders before the Jewish New Year that he had communicated to the Palestinians, “You’ll get money, but we’re not paying you until we make a deal. If we don’t make a deal, we’re not paying.”
PA President Mahmoud Abbas and almost all senior members of his government have rejected working with the American team since the US declared Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital last December, saying that US actions have proven it to be firmly on Israel’s side, thereby making them “part of the problem instead of the solution.”
And in public, at least, the steady slashing of aid has made them even more defiant, not less, as they demand that the rest of the world step in to make up the shortfall.
The PA is not just grasping at straws, as the issue of aid has its supporters, even in Congress, who believe that Trump’s path is the wrong way to go about trying to settle the conflict.
Tim Reiser, for example, foreign policy aide to Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, who set up the conflict management program, said his boss was vehemently opposed to the move.
“Senator Leahy regards the decision to cut off funding for [Judea an Samaria] and Gaza as a sign that this White House has failed at diplomacy,” he said to the Times . “This is not a partisan view. It’s the view of those who recognize that you don’t advance the cause of peace by cutting off programs that are designed to promote tolerance, understanding and address shared problems.”
Tags
Who is online
425 visitors
WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! Although I agree with Trump cutting off funds that perpetuate the "refugee" fraud, and with other aid that Abbas steals to fund terrorists by paying them salaries if they have murdered Jews, and to their families if they died in the attempt. Funds that are directed towards encouraging normalization between the Arabs and the Jews should not be cut off. I agree with what Senator Leahy has said:
That is my attitude because of what my son learned by being a counsellor at the Seeds of Peace Camp in Maine for two summers. Both Palestinian and Israeli children were put into bunkhouses together, and at first they feared and hated each other, and by the end of the program they were hugging and kissing each other, and crying because they were parting, promising to write and visit each other (and many did). That's why I know that those programs work and should continue to be fully funded.
As for funding refugees, how the hell can you call a refugee the GRANDSON of a refugee, who has, and whose parents have, been living in a different country all their life? If you agree with that, then why don't I receive refugee relief? My father fled Russia during the Russian revolution without a dollar in his pocket at the age of 13 because he was starting to be attacked for being bourgeois (his family had owned a sugar refinery) and although I was born in Canada I should be as entitled to refugee relief funding for the rest of my life, as should my children and grandchildren, just like the Palestinian children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of refugees.
The reason that there are generations of Palestinian refugees outside of Israel is the countries that they reside in will not make them full citizens. In most Arab countries they live in poorly funded refugee camps.
Were your parents made Canadian citizens? When you were born in Canada were you given full Canadian citizenship status? That is not the case in that majority of Arab countries the Palestinian refugees reside in. There is no citizenship just for being born there. They have greatly diminished rights; or no rights at all.
Palestinian refugees in these countries have a very poor education; so they are not coveted by the Western world.
Then maybe the Jordan Option (which is probably a pipe dream) is the best solution. Send all the refugees to Jordan. Many most likely trace their ancestry to there anyway. There they can get full citizenship rights. As for the Gazans, the solution would be to confederated Gaza and Egypt (which is not really likely due to Egypt's resistance). Since money talks, think of all the money that has been and will continue to be squandered on UNRWA and all the aid given to the Palestinians by America, the EU, Canada, etc. applied to resettle them, and it doesn't sound so impossible. Of course the big problem is that the other countries don't want them because the Palestinian and Hamas governments have not educated their children to be peaceful, productive citizens, but to be trained terrorists, glorified in their nations and compensated for murdering innocent people.
Yes, my parents became full citizens of Canada as did I due to my birth there, but as you well know there are a number of reasons why the Palestinians (and I use that identification loosely) are not considered desirable for citizenship by most civilized countries for reasons I stated, besides the fact that the Jew-hating Israel-delegitimizing Zionist-despising Arab/Muslim countries prefer to use them as a pawn for their own political purposes.
Of course, Trudeau and his Canadian government is prone to accepting them all as Canadian citizens as long as they vote to keep him in power. He is already doing a good job of preparing that possibility. Do you know that the city I live in in China has a population almost equal to that of the entire country of Canada? There is lots of room for them there, lots of fresh water to drink (a need you emphasize), and lots of snow for them to get jobs shovelling. However, if that happens, there will be as much a need for the US to build a wall on that border as there is for one with Mexico.
You know, I really have to laugh at the liberals on this site. If I post an article about Islamic terrorism, or Hamas terrorism, or a FACTUAL article from Gatestone Institure, the NT liberal brigade jumps all over me. But here I've posted a article that says that Trump is WRONG about doing something, and I post that I AGREE with DEMOCRATIC SENATOR LEAHY and give my reasons why, and what happens? CRICKETS - oh, maybe that should not be so loud - What do I hear from the NT liberals, the NT Democrats, the NT Defenders of the Jihad? ? ? ? crickets
1) I am not a liberal
2) I am not a Democrat- nor am I Republican. I am an independent fiscal conservative that votes for the best candidate; which is getting damn hard these days with the garbage the two major parties are running. Wish we had a legitimate 3rd party system; but until the two major parties are brought down it will never happen.
3) Find one instance where I have supported the Jihad? In fact most people that you would deem anti Israel don't support the Jihad. It is allowable to think that all sides suck; and that includes the Arab countries that won't make full citizens the Palestinian refugees that are already within their borders, many for several generations.
Tone down the accusations and you might get more responses.
Well, if you are not a Democrat, a Republican, a leftist, a liberal or a supporter of the Jihad, than you have no need to defend yourself from my accusation. In fact I consider that you have provided good cause for the continuation of the UNRWA drain on its supporters (although I feel that sometimes it can require a radical act to get something beneficial to happen).
I accept fair criticism - I don't consider myself to be beyond it, but it's the liars calling me an Islamophobe and a hater of all Muslims that I resent and I'll not stop telling those who perpetuate those lies what I think of them even if it does reduce my popularity on this site.
I will support Israel notwithstanding that I may at times be critical of its government and its policies, its leader, its Judiary, its IDF, its settlers and its Chassidic Haradim, its lack of effective public relations - there is a basic need for it to continue to exist to be the homeland for the Jews. How many Americans despise their country just because they disagree with its leader, government or policies?
"The US has been by far the largest donor to the Palestinians over decades , but President Trump has made it clear on many different issues that j ust because something was done in a certain way for years doesn’t mean that it should keep being done that way – especially if there are no results in favor of American interests."
“Nobody is entitled to America’s foreign aid.”
Let other Allies of the U.S. step up !