The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain slashed their funding for the UN agency working with Palestinian refugees in the wake of normalization with Israel, Channel 12 reported on Friday.
The report cited the Center for Near East Policy Research, an Israeli think tank, as saying that the UAE only handed the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) $1 million in 2020.
The sum represents a decline of over $50 million against the two previous years, the report said, with the body confirming the figures to the news outlet.
According to the report, the moves could be seen as an act of retaliation after the Palestinians condemned the two Gulf states over forging formal diplomatic ties with Israel, accusing them of treachery.
The Palestinian Authority also pulled its envoys out of the two states shortly after they announced their respective plans to normalize ties with Israel in deals brokered by former US President Donald Trump.
UNRWA explained by CUFI:
UNRWA’s mission has no connection to a peace settlement, its bespoke and frankly perverse hereditary refugee policy has seen 740,000 refugees become 5.6 million, with some so-called refugees living comfortably in other countries. UNRWA, unlike UNHCR that oversees all other refugee situations elsewhere around the world, has no limits to its recognition of refugees, allowing unlimited generations of descendants, including those born in other countries or who are citizens of those countries, to continue to be classified as refugees in perpetuity.
It has created dependency, with Palestinians having little control over local services. It employs members of terrorist organisations. UNRWA schools and hospitals are used as arms caches for Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the organisation is riven with corruption.
But perhaps the most harmful UNRWA legacy is that Palestinian children are taught in UNRWA schools to hate Jewish people.
The UK, and the international community, pump millions of dollars into UNRWA every year. Unless that stops, we will have a new generation of terrorists, more attacks and no peace.
Prime Minister Netanyahu said in 2018, “UNRWA is an organization that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem, and perpetuates also the narrative of the so-called right of return, whose goal is the elimination of Israel. For these reasons, UNRWA should be shut down.” He added, “UNRWA’s aid money should be transferred gradually to the UNHCR, which has clear criteria for supporting true refugees, and not the fake refugee status we have today under UNRWA.”
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