US stops funding UNRWA

Pacifico

                                                                        The Trump Administration is cutting funding to a UN organisation dedicated to assisting Palestinian refugees. The US state department said Friday it is “no longer willing to shoulder the very disproportionate share of the burden” in supporting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

The UNRWA was founded in December 1949 by the UN General Assembly after the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. The agency began operations in 1950, and most recently saw its mandate extended by the UN General Assembly until June 30, 2020 “in the absence of a solution to the Palestine refugee program”.                                Click to expand...       

Good move by the Trump Administration. The majority of the refugees from 1948 are long dead and there comes a point when people are no longer refugees, they are simply citizens and inhabitants of some place other than that of their forbears. Continuing the fiction that the 'refugees' can go home only prevents a solution to the problems of the Middle East

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weaviemx5

And looking at it from the other side;

Trump's UN funding move risks damage to Palestine, Israel and US

Like it or not, it’s a two-sided problem and Trump simply trying to cut out one side, whether it’s to please his pro-Israel Evangelicals, or just to gain votes, there are actual humans involved.

Pacifico

But your link shows the basic problem that UNWRA is failing to solve.

"Over the years those who originally fled their homes have had children, and their children have had children, and so the issue has become no longer one simply of displacement of the original refugees but about a fair resolution for a group of about 5 million people "

weaviemx5

Surely, until there’s a solution, there are still ‘refugees’ unable to live in what they see as their rightful homes?  Trump may be trying to wash his hands of the problem to please Israel but that’s not really a solution is it?

Pacifico

But in no other circumstance would we consider the children (and their children) refugees - how far do you want to carry this?. Perhaps we should should count as refugees all the decedents of the Huguenots in the UK.

Trump is not washing his hands - he is taking action to solve the problem, as we see the current policy was not doing that.

robel

Its a fudgeing Ponzi scheme...and 30,000 Palestinians are employed by UNRWA...

raduv1

Ain't it just another nail to weaken Palestinians so they have to accept whatever peace deal Kushner is working on ?

tapzilla2k

I guess you've not looked at how the Arab states view and treat Palestinians ? Full Citizenship rights are denied, they are allowed to live and work. But everything that makes you a citizen is denied, thus to all intent and purposes they are refugees. They don't for example have passports in a lot of cases.

Doesn't really solve the problem, if Merkel and other world leaders follow through on promises to continue with the programme, then all Trump's doing is saving US tax dollars to spend on something else. Quite possibly on Bolton's Iranian War dream.

Pacifico

They are treated badly by other Arab states becuase this fiction that they are all refugees is encouraged by the UN. If they were treated the same as any other  group that would be assimilated into the countries they were born in.

If Merkel wants to fund it then she can go ahead, but I suspect the German taxpayers may have something to say about that.

weaviemx5

This thread is the first time I’ve heard of the UNRWA but the video source hardly sounds impartial;