JERUSALEM: The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees suggested that the US slashed his budget early this year to punish the Palestinians for their criticism of the American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but he warned that the Palestinian refugee issue will not go away.
The comments by Pierre Kraehenbuehl came amid signs that the US, with Israeli support, is aiming to abolish UNRWA in an apparent attempt to remove one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the negotiating agenda.
“One cannot simply wish 5 million people away,” Kraehenbuehl, commissioner of the UN Relief and Works Agency, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
In January, the US, the largest donor to the agency, slashed some $300 million from its annual contribution to UNRWA, prompting what Kraehenbuehl called an unprecedented financial crisis.
Although he has made up some of the deficit by raising money from other countries, the agency still lacks over $200 million. It recently laid off over 100 people in the Gaza Strip and cut back the hours of 500 other employees. The upcoming school year for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children across the Middle East has been threatened.
Kraehenbuehl said he was caught off guard by the American decision, which came just weeks after he had held what he described as a successful meeting with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and chief Mideast adviser.
He said he still has not gotten a straight answer from the Americans about why they made their decision.
But he said he believes it is connected to the uproar over the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December. The Palestinians, who seek east Jerusalem as their capital, condemned the decision and severed nearly all ties with the Americans.
“I can say with a great degree of confidence that the decision was not related to UNRWA’s performance, because in November I had received very constructive and openly positive feedback on those issues,” he said.
“A few weeks later, tensions increased around the question of Jerusalem,” he added. “It appears that the humanitarian funding to UNRWA got caught up in the deep polarization around that question.”
The State Department said it is reviewing funding to UNRWA and has not decided whether to restore support in the future. It repeated its position that the agency’s repeated financial crises are “unsustainable” and called on it to find other countries to share the funding burden and to undertake “fundamental reforms.”
But privately, there are signs that the American agenda runs deeper and that the Trump administration seeks to abolish UNRWA altogether.
In an internal email recently published by Foreign Policy magazine, Kushner called for a “sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA.”
“This (agency) perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help peace,” he reportedly wrote.
The Palestinians fear the US is putting pressure on host countries to absorb their refugee populations and eliminate the issue from future peace negotiations. The White House says it is working on a regional peace plan, though it has not said when it will be released.
UNRWA was established in the wake of the 1948 Mideast war surrounding Israel’s creation. An estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes in the fighting.
In the absence of a solution, the UN General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA’s mandate. The agency now provides education, health care and social services to more than 5 million refugees and their descendants. It serves populations in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Seen by the Palestinians and most of the international community as providing a valuable safety net, UNRWA is viewed far differently by Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses the agency of perpetuating the conflict by helping promote an unrealistic Palestinian demand that refugees have the “right of return” to long-lost homes in what is now Israel. He has said UNRWA should be abolished and its responsibilities taken over by the main UN refugee agency.
Some in Israel have even tougher criticism, accusing UNRWA of teaching hatred of Israel in its classrooms and tolerating or assisting Hamas militants in Gaza.
Kraehenbuehl said Israel has raised similar concerns for years, but that there has been a “strong intensification” of the criticism now that the Trump administration appears to be in agreement.
He rejected the Israeli claim that his agency is perpetuating the conflict, saying that it is carrying out a UN-mandated mission that reflects the will of the international community.
Kraehenbuehl said that Israeli claims that the Palestinians are the only people to pass down refugee status to their children also are unfounded, saying that Afghan refugees displaced decades ago have the same status.
He also noted that UNRWA has a committee to monitor the content of its classrooms and has condemned attempts by Gaza militants to use UNRWA facilities for cover.
Kraehenbuehl said the best way to solve these matters is to find a “political solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that addresses the fate of the refugees.
In the meantime, he said UNRWA’s focus is for its schools to open on schedule in early September. For now, he said there are enough funds to keep the schools running only until the end of the month. An aggressive fund-raising effort is under way to ensure the schools operate for the entire academic year.
“I see the courage displayed by our students in the face of so much adversity,” he said. “I really find it very difficult to imagine that I have to go back to them and tell them that I have failed and we have failed to mobilize the needed resources, to keep the one thing that gives them a certain prospect in life ... which is their education. So, we will knock on every door, we will leave no stone unturned until we have good news on this front.”
UN official: Palestinian refugee issue can’t be wished away
UN official: Palestinian refugee issue can’t be wished away
- In January, the US, the largest donor to the agency, slashed some $300 million from its annual contribution to UNRWA
- The State Department said it is reviewing funding to UNRWA and has not decided whether to restore support in the future
Refugees who escaped from war-torn Tuti Island speak of hunger, disease
- Charity kitchens have been forced to close in Tuti and elsewhere in the capital Khartoum due to lack of funding and supplies, and high prices
JUBA: Mohammed Awad and his family are among dozens who escaped Sudan’s Tuti Island earlier this year amid a siege by the Rapid Support Forces, finding refuge at a shelter after surviving for months on scant food and the risk of disease.
The island in the middle of the Nile serves as a microcosm for the devastation unleashed by a war that began in April 2023.
More than 61,000 people are estimated to have died in Khartoum state during the first 14 months of Sudan’s war, significantly more than previously recorded, according to a new report.
Activists report that the Rapid Support Forces charged people large sums to evacuate them.
HIGHLIGHT
More than 61,000 people are estimated to have died in Khartoum state during the first 14 months of Sudan’s war.
“There is no good food, and there’s a lot of diseases, there is no sleep, no safety,” Awad said, holding one of his children at the shelter for displaced residents in Omdurman, an army-controlled refuge. The island is one of 14 places across Sudan at risk of famine, according to experts. Dengue fever has ravaged Tuti, a close-knit farming community.
Sarah Siraj, a mother who left with her two children, said six or seven people were dying daily, and that she was only able to have her children treated for dengue, a mosquito-borne disease, once she reached Omdurman.
Charity kitchens have been forced to close in Tuti and elsewhere in the capital Khartoum due to lack of funding and supplies, and high prices.
Rabeea Abdel Gader, a nutrition guide, has been treating newly arrived families at a city shelter.
“We ask the mother about what they eat ... Sometimes the mother responds with her tears,” she said.
Meanwhile, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Monday calling for an immediate end to hostilities in Sudan.
Lebanon says Israeli strike on central Beirut kills four
- “A hostile drone targeted a residential apartment behind the Husseiniya of Zuqaq Al-Blat in the capital Beirut, causing great damage,” the NNA said
- The densely populated working class district of Zuqaq Al-Blat has welcomed many displaced people who fled Israeli strikes on south and east Lebanon
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said Israel struck a densely packed Beirut neighborhood on Monday, killing at least four people, in the third attack in two days on the city’s central districts.
“The Israeli enemy strike on Zuqaq Al-Blat in Beirut killed four people and injured 18,” a ministry statement said in preliminary toll.
The official National News Agency (NNA) said an apartment near a Shiite Muslim place of worship had been targeted.
“A hostile drone targeted a residential apartment behind the Husseiniya of Zuqaq Al-Blat in the capital Beirut, causing great damage,” the NNA said.
An AFP correspondent in the area heard two blasts, and said the raid badly damaged the ground floor of a building.
Reporters elsewhere in the city heard ambulance sirens.
The densely populated working class district of Zuqaq Al-Blat has welcomed many displaced people who fled Israeli strikes on south and east Lebanon, as well as south Beirut — areas where the Iran-backed Hezbollah holds sway.
The strike hit near a building housing many displaced Lebanese, the AFP correspondent said.
It was cordoned off by security forces as residents rushed to help in the rescue efforts, he added.
Several hundreds of meters (yards) away was the site of a similar strike on Sunday, in the Mar Elias neighborhood, which the Lebanese health ministry said killed three people including a woman.
Israel has not commented on Monday’s and Sunday’s strikes in central Beirut, but confirmed one air raid in the area the killed Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif.
The strike, also on Sunday, hit the Lebanese office of the Syrian Baath party, killing Afif and four other members of his media team, Hezbollah said, with the health ministry saying seven people had been killed in total.
Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its air campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops following almost a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah over the Gaza war.
Lebanese authorities say more than 3,510 people have been killed since Hezbollah-Israel clashes began in October last year, with most casualties recorded since war erupted in September.
US hits Israeli settler group with sanctions over West Bank violence
- Sanctions block Americans from any transactions with Amana and freeze its US-held assets
- Settler violence had been on the rise prior to the eruption of the Gaza war, and has worsened since the conflict began
WASHINGTON: The United States imposed sanctions on Monday on an Israeli settler group it accused of helping perpetrate violence in the occupied West Bank, which has seen a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians.
The Amana settler group “a key part of the Israeli extremist settlement movement and maintains ties to various persons previously sanctioned by the US government and its partners for perpetrating violence in the West Bank,” the Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the sanctions.
The sanctions also target a subsidiary of Amana called Binyanei Bar Amana, described by Treasury as a company that builds and sell homes in Israeli settlements and settler outposts.
The sanctions block Americans from any transactions with Amana and freeze its US-held assets. The United Kingdom and Canada have also imposed sanctions on Amana.
Israel has settled the West Bank since capturing it during the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians say the settlements have undermined the prospects for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israel views the West Bank as the biblical Judea and Samaria, and the settlers cite biblical ties to the land.
Settler violence had been on the rise prior to the eruption of the Gaza war, and has worsened since the conflict began over a year ago.
Most countries deem the settlements illegal under international law, a position disputed by Israel which sees the territory as a security bulwark. In 2019, the then-Trump administration abandoned the long-held US position that the settlements are illegal before it was restored by President Joe Biden.
Last week, nearly 90 US lawmakers urged Biden to impose sanctions on members of members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over anti-Palestinian violence in the West Bank.
Around 100 projectiles fired from Lebanon into Israel: army
- Israel’s first responders said two people, including a 65-year-old woman with a shrapnel wound to the neck, sustained light injuries in northern Israel
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said Hezbollah fired around 100 projectiles from Lebanon into northern Israel on Monday, with the country’s air defense system intercepting some of them.
Israel’s first responders said two people, including a 65-year-old woman with a shrapnel wound to the neck, sustained light injuries in northern Israel and were taken to hospital.
The military said in a first statement that “as of 15:00 (1300 GMT), approximately 60 projectiles that were fired by the Hezbollah terrorist organization have crossed from Lebanon into Israel today.”
Later it said, “following the sirens that sounded between 15:09 and 15:11 in the Western Galilee area, approximately 40 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory.”
Israel has escalated its bombing of targets in Lebanon since September 23 and has since sent in ground troops, following almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges of fire begun by the Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in support of Hamas in Gaza.
‘No plan B’ to aid Palestinian refugees: UNRWA chief
- Israel ordered ban on organization that coordinates nearly all aid in war-ravaged Gaza
- UNRWA provides assistance to nearly six million Palestinian refugees
GENEVA: There is no alternative to the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, its chief said Monday, following Israel’s order to ban the organization that coordinates nearly all aid in war-ravaged Gaza.
“There is no plan B,” the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, told reporters in Geneva.
Within the UN “there is no other agency geared to provide the same activities,” providing not only aid in Gaza but also primary health care and education to hundreds of thousands of children, he said.
He has called on the UN, which created UNRWA in 1949, to prevent the implementation of a ban on the organization in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, which was approved by the Israeli parliament last month.
The ban, which is due to take effect in January, sparked global condemnation, including from key Israeli backer the United States.
UNRWA provides assistance to nearly six million Palestinian refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Israel has long been critical of the agency, but tensions escalated after Israel in January accused about a dozen of its staff of taking part in Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
A series of probes found some “neutrality related issues” at UNRWA and determined that nine of the agency’s roughly 13,000 employees in Gaza “may have been involved” in the attack, but found no evidence for Israel’s central allegations.
Lazzarini was in Geneva for a meeting of UNRWA’s advisory commission to discuss the way forward at the organization’s “darkest moment.”
“The clock is ticking fast,” he told the commission, according to a transcript.
Describing Gaza as “an unrelenting dystopian horror,” he warned that “what hangs in the balance, is the fate of millions of Palestine refugees and the legitimacy of the rules-based international order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War.”
Anton Leis, head of Spain’s international cooperation and development agency and chair of the advisory committee, told reporters that there was “simply no alternative to UNRWA,” which he said had seen more than 240 staff members killed in Gaza since the start of the war.
“It is the only organization that possesses the staff, the infrastructure and the capacity to deliver lifesaving assistance to Palestinian refugees at the scale needed, especially in Gaza,” he said.
Lazzarini agreed, saying that “If you are talking about bringing in a truck with food, you will surely find an alternative,” but “the answer is no” when it comes to education and primary health care.
Lazzarini warned that a halt to UNRWA’s activities in Israel and East Jerusalem would block it from coordinating massive aid efforts inside Gaza.
“This would mean we could not operate in Gaza,” he said, adding that it would not be possible to coordinate the deconfliction with Israeli authorities to ensure aid convoys can move safely.
“The environment would be much too dangerous,” he said.
The UNRWA chief has charged that Israel’s main objective in its attacks on the agency is to strip Palestinians of their refugee status, undermining efforts toward a two-state solution.
“We have to be clear, even if UNRWA today would cease its operation, the statue of refugee would remain,” he said.
Without the agency, he said, the responsibility for providing services to the Palestinian refugees “will come back to the occupying power, being Israel.”
If no one steps in to fill the void, he said, it “will create a vacuum ... (and) sow the seeds for more extremism, more hate in the future.”
He called on the international community to go beyond statements of condemnation and put far more pressure on Israel.
“We feel alone.”
