Two Republican lawmakers are preventing the State Department from supplying humanitarian aid to Palestinians despite warnings of a looming humanitarian crisis.
As the top ranking members on their congressional foreign affair panels, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) are blocking about $75 million in food assistance from reaching Palestinian refugees through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
In 2018 the Trump administration cut funding to the program. The Biden administration moved to restore it but at a level of more than $250 million less than what the U.S. had previously given.
In June UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini sounded the alarm over UNRWA funding, saying that donor countries had only provided the group with $107 million of the $300 million needed to continue their work. The organization says that the holdup is impacting more than 200,000 Palestinian and could mean the discontinuation of food assistance for some 1.2 million refugees in Gaza.
“We will continue to work tirelessly with our partners, including host countries — the refugees’ top supporters — to raise the funds needed,” said Lazzarini.
UNRWA’s economic woes go far beyond U.S. funding. “The financial crisis facing UNRWA is deep and complex, the group’s Gaza representative Adnan Abu Hassna told Mondoweiss last month. It has been suffering from these issues for many years, but this year is the most dangerous…the Ukrainian crisis caused a global rise in food prices and other basic human needs. Donors redirect their funds to Ukraine instead of UNRWA. Global inflation is one of the reasons too.”
The organization says it might have to end services for Palestinians as soon as August if it doesn’t obtain more funding.
UNRWA appealed to the international community for $23.8 worth of assistance after Israel’s recent raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. According to the UN more than 3,500 refugees were forced to leave during the raid and 1,000 camp shelters were damaged.
The holdup has been publicly criticized by human rights organizations.
“The US sends Israel nearly $4 billion in military funding every single year, funding that is used to harm and even kill Palestinians,” tweeted the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU). “UNRWA needs hardly a fraction of that amount to feed Palestinian families in need. Due to Israeli apartheid, Palestinians rely on UNRWA to survive. Congress should be helping Palestinian refugees—not blocking the funds they need to survive.”
On July 12th, 25 civil society organizations (including Oxfam America, J Street, Americans for Peace Now, and the Episcopal Church) sent a letter to Risch and McCaul urging action. “The generosity of the American people toward those in need has always been commendable and this critical assistance can alleviate further suffering. Denying food assistance will strip away the last vestiges of hope for people in Gaza who simply yearn for a dignified existence,” it reads. “The repercussions of such a situation could also be catastrophic for regional stability, negatively impacting both Palestinians and Israelis alike.”
In March Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) led a letter to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations from 35 House members calling for another $259 million to be sent to Gaza and the West Bank. The House members also want U.S. assistance to UNRWA increased to its 2017 level of $359.3 million. “Four out of the Agency’s five fields of operation are in crisis; ranging from the aftermaths of a terrible natural disaster, a seriously deteriorating security situation, and unprecedented financial and economic collapse,” it reads. “Continuing UNRWA’s critical humanitarian and human development mission on behalf of Palestinian refugees requires more, not less levels of U.S. support.”
Risch has blamed the delay on the White House. “The administration has all the powers they need to provide emergency food aid to UNRWA,” a spokesperson for the Senator recently told HuffPost. “The funds they are asking for are outside of an emergency situation and so Senator Risch will continue to hold them until his long-standing concerns about UNRWA are resolved.”
Earlier this year, Republicans in the House and Senate introduced the United Nations Relief and Works Agency Accountability and Transparency Act, which would require Secretary of State Antony Blinken to withhold funds from the organization until it is subjected to an external audit. “Israel is one of our greatest allies and closest friends; we cannot say we truly stand with them while helping prop up a corrupt organization like this,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) after the legislation was introduced. “If our actions do not match our words, then our word means nothing.”
It is — or should be — Israel’s responsibility to support the refugees it has created. Since it did it with the unconditional support of the US, the US has the responsibility too.
The US official policy from 1948 up to the Kennedy administration, with ups and downs, was for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes and farms. Now this!! Same with settlements. From being illegal and obstacle to peace to getting close to annexation and perhaps expulsion. Things are getting worse for Palestinians in this world order (perhaps disorder)!
All countries represented in the UN which imposed partition on Palestine in 1947 and failed to prevent the ethnic cleansing and the creation of the Palestinian refugee crisis share responsibility – the USA first and foremost – for the welfare of the Palestinian refugees. UNRWA was created, because the UN rightly admitted that it shared responsibility for the refugee crisis and it remains responsible until the plight of the refugees has been solved in a just manner.
It is blatant hypocrisy of the Republican lawmakers here above to speak of “corruption” in UNRWA, when they support the deeply corrupt Israeli regime to the hilt.
I have worked as a health worker in Palestinian refugee communities. UNRWA plays a vital role in educating and delivering primary health care services to countless Palestinian refugee children and providing the poorest among the refugees with basic food supplies.
Keep your hands off UNRWA!
The LoN Mandate for Palestine defined a hostile occupation whose purpose was replacement genocide of Palestinians.
When the international community banned genocide on Dec 11, 1946 and made this ban jus cogens, any international instrument’s clause that violated the ban on genocide was voided. This ban explains why the Nov 1947 Partition Plan was optional and non-binding. The Palestinians had to agree to any international agreement on sovereignty that might result in a population transfer or exchange. Otherwise the international agreement would give legal status to replacement genocide.
The white racist states allowed the Zionist colonial settlers to get away with genocide. Because genocide is an international (and US federal) capital crime that has no statute of limitations, the international community can restore the integrity of international law and start to make amends for its role in the crime, which we Palestinians have suffered, by abolishing the Zionist state and by restoring Palestine to its native population, us Palestinians.
What is replacement genocide? It is defined in Count Three (the Genocide Count) of the Indictment of the 1945-1946 Nuremberg International Tribunal but is unfortunately called Germanization. Germanization becomes no less an international crime and no less an act of genocide by renaming it Judaization.
(J) GERMANIZATION OF OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
In certain occupied territories purportedly annexed to Germany the defendants methodically and pursuant to plan endeavored to assimilate those territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich. The defendants endeavored to obliterate the former national character of these territories. In pursuance of these plans and endeavors, the defendants forcibly deported inhabitants who were predominantly non-German and introduced thousands of German colonists.