The United Arab Emirates significantly reduced its funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in 2020, the year they signed a US-broken treaty with Israel that was heavily criticized by the Palestinian Authority.
The organization known as UNRWA provides education, health care and other vital services to some of the 5.7 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, most of the descendants of the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were deported. out of Israel during the 1948 war around its creation.
Members of a Palestinian family will receive food aid provided by UNRWA in Gaza
(Photo: AP)
The UAE donated $ 51.8 million to UNRWA in 2018 and again in 2019, but in 2020 it provided just $ 1 million to the group, Sami group Mshasha said on Friday. “We very much hope that they will return to previous years’ levels in 2021,” he said.
Emirati officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Saturday.
Last year the UAE forged a normal relationship with Israel, breaking with a long-standing Arab alliance that should only be recognized as derogations in the peace process with the Palestinians, who have been moribund for more than a decade. .
UNRWA food aid in Gaza
(Photo: EPA)
Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco struck similar agreements shortly afterwards, in what the Trump administration described as a historic diplomatic achievement. President Joe Biden welcomed the agreements and has said he will encourage the resumption of direct peace talks.
But the Palestinian Authority viewed the agreements as a betrayal and sharply criticized the UAE. That may have prompted an alliance of oil – rich sheikhdoms, which includes Dubai and Abu Dhabi, to reduce support.
A child stands beside a sack of flour as people come for food aid from the UNRWA circulation center in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip
(Photo: AFP)
UNRWA critics say it survives the refugee crisis created by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” for the refugees and their descendants. Israel strongly rejects the idea of a right of return, which would leave the country with a Palestinian majority if fully implemented.
The Trump administration cut all funding to UNRWA in 2018, one of several unprecedented measures it took to support the separation of Israel and the Palestinians. The U.S. had donated about $ 360 million a year to the organization.
The Biden administration announced last month that it would restore support to the Palestinians, bring in refugees, and say it would work to revive peace talks. Both sides have not held substantive peace talks since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began in 2009.