U.S. to end funding to U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees

pulse 08:59 - 31 August 2018

Each year, the State Department transfers money by the end of September to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government has decided to stop all funding it gives to a U.N. agency that provides assistance to millions of Palestinian refugees, ending a decadeslong policy of supporting it, according to a former senior U.S. aid official.

The move was pushed hardest by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser on the Middle East, as part of a plan to compel Palestinian politicians to drop demands that many of those refugees be given the right to return to what they call their homeland, said the former official, R. David Harden, who worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development until April.

Each year, the State Department transfers money by the end of September to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. Earlier this year, the State Department released $60 million of $350 million allocated for the agency, but Kushner and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, have decided not to give the remaining $290 million, said Harden, who was briefed on the plans and oversaw projects in the Palestinian territories for more than a decade.

“What we’re seeing right now is a capricious move that has a very high risk of unsettling the region,” Harden said, noting that the relief agency supports about 5 million refugees across the Middle East.

Kushner has been working on a proposal for a peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is seeking a way to get Palestinian leaders to drop demands for the right of most or all of the refugees to return to land now under Israel’s control.

The vast majority of the 5 million are descendants of the original displaced Palestinians, and the U.N. aid agency considers all of those refugees, said Peter Mulrean, director of the UNRWA Representative Office at the United Nations.

Kushner and other U.S. officials are seeking to change that designation in hopes it will alter the debate over who has the right of return. The right of return is one of the greatest points of contention between Israeli and Palestinian officials, Harden said.

The United States is the biggest donor to the agency, providing about 25 percent of the annual funding.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.