The Trump administration hopes to pressure Palestinians to return to bargaining table.
Months after scaling back financial support for the United Nations agency that provides humanitarian aid to more than 5 million Palestinian refugees, the Trump administration has decided to end funding altogether, several sources told Foreign Policy, in a decision that analysts said would cause more hardship and possibly unrest in Gaza, the West Bank, and other parts of the Middle East.
The decision was made at a meeting earlier this month between President Donald Trump’s advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to the sources. The administration has informed key regional governments in recent weeks of its plan.
The United States had been providing the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, some $350 million a year—more than any other country. The sum amounted to more than a quarter of the agency’s $1.2 billion annual budget.
Dave Harden, a former U.S. Agency for International Development official briefed on the meeting between Kushner and Pompeo, said the decision would potentially benefit hard-liners in the region, including the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas.
“An immediate and capricious cut off of UNRWA funding … risks collapsing the Palestinian Authority, empowering Hamas, and shifting the responsibility of health, education, and ultimately security services to the Israelis,” Harden told FP.
“The decision is dangerous, with unpredictable consequences.”
A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the meeting but said that “U.S. policy regarding UNRWA has been under frequent evaluation and internal discussion.”
The decision underscored the influence of Kushner and Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., who have overcome resistance to the cuts from the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence community, and the State Department under the leadership of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Opponents of the steep cuts fear the U.S. retreat would stoke instability in the region.
Kushner contends that UNRWA’s assistance has built a culture of dependency among the Palestinians and that it helps preserve unrealistic expectations that they might one day return to the homes they left in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
He and Haley are gambling that the financial pressure will force the Palestinians to resume negotiations with Washington’s Middle East peace team, which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas halted over Trump’s decision last year to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
SOURCE: Foreign Policy
