President Donald Trump held a conference call with reporters where he said that unless Palestine makes peace with Israel, he will not provide aid for the war-torn country.
“I stopped massive amounts of money that we were paying to the Palestinians and the Palestinian leaders. We were—the United States was paying them tremendous amounts of money,” Trump told reporters. “And I’d say, 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.”
Just last week, the Trump administration announced that it was officially cancelling its funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), an organization founded in 1949 to assist Palestinians who were driven out of their homes following the establishment of the state of Israel. The organization helps an estimated 5 million Palestinian refugees today, including the descendants of the refugees alive when the organization was founded.
UNRWA provides humanitarian aid, education and vocational training to Palestinians, among other services. The U.S. was the organization’s largest donor, and its funding cut is expected to impair UNRWA’s ability to provide services.
“The Administration has carefully reviewed the issue and determined that the United States will not make additional contributions to UNRWA. When we made a U.S. contribution of $60 million in January, we made it clear that the United States was no longer willing to shoulder the very disproportionate share of the burden of UNRWA’s costs that we had assumed for many years. Several countries, including Jordan, Egypt, Sweden, Qatar, and the UAE [United Arab Emirates] have shown leadership in addressing this problem, but the overall international response has not been sufficient,” a statement by the State Department read.
“Beyond the budget gap itself and failure to mobilize adequate and appropriate burden sharing, the fundamental business model and fiscal practices that have marked UNRWA for years—tied to UNRWA’s endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries—is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years. The United States will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation,” the statement carried on.
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