Facing a financial crisis after the US cut funding, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on Thursday said the well-being of 5.3 million Palestinian refugees will continue to exist whether there is money or not.
While the agency on Wednesday received new pledges totaling US$118 million, it has a US$68 million shortfall this year and by January it needs to find funding for next year’s budget of about US$1.2 billion.
“Of course, we worry about it,” UNRWA commissioner-general Pierre Krahenbuhl said.
“The key question for next year will be whether these countries that have shown themselves so generous in supporting us this year ... are they prepared to sustain those contributions?”
As Krahenbuhl sat down for an interview about the agency’s future on Thursday, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told the UN General Assembly that UNRWA is critical to millions of his people, but US officials “just want to obliterate it altogether.”
UNRWA was established after the war surrounding Israel’s establishment in 1948 to aid 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes. Today, it provides education, healthcare and social services to 5.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Krahenbuhl said the US funding cut of US$300 million early this year and the Aug. 31 announcement by Washington that it was ending decades of funding for UNRWA were “a matter of deep regret and sincere disappointment,” as the US was historically the agency’s largest donor, paying nearly 30 percent of its budget.
“It’s a disappointment also because the decision was taken for political reasons,” he said. “It’s not in relation to our performance, and that makes it very difficult for a humanitarian organization, because for political reasons we’re related and adjusted to the tensions between the US and the Palestinian leadership.”
“It’s very important to protect humanitarian funding from these forms of politicization,” Krahenbuhl said.
In announcing the end to funding, the US called UNRWA an “irredeemably flawed operation.”
Foreign Policy magazine quoted Jared Kushner, the top adviser on Middle East affairs to US President Donald Trump, as saying in an internal e-mail that there should be a “sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA” and the agency “perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help peace.”
Israel, which praised the end of US funding, accuses UNRWA of perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Some Israelis accuse the agency of teaching hatred of Israel in its classrooms and tolerating or assisting Hamas, the militant Islamic group that rules Gaza.
Krahenbuhl rejected all the allegations and touted the quality of UNRWA schools, saying it was a touch-and-go decision to open them for the new school term that started last month.
“The fact that donors came forward — Gulf countries, Asia, Europe, Canada and others, helped us and allowed us to open the school year,” he said.
Krahenbuhl said that UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres strongly supports a two-state solution and has said there is “no Plan B.”
Palestinians say an attempt to define who is a Palestinian refugee by Israel and the US is an attempt to get the issue on the negotiating table.
Krahenbuhl said the UN General Assembly, where UNRWA’s mandate originated, states clearly that refugees and their descendants are recognized as refugees.
The UN refugee agency has the same definition, he said.
“It is not for an individual member state to modify that or to suddenly suggest unilaterally that there is a change in numbers,” he said.
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