Primer: April – August 1948: More than 700,000 Palestine refugees are displaced as a result of the Arab-Israeli War. Per the United Nations Relief and Works Agency website. So, we have a generational refugee condition, where they are refugees in essentially their own land…let that sink in.
UNRWA human development and humanitarian services encompass primary and vocational education, primary health care, relief and social services, infrastructure and camp improvement, microfinance and emergency response, including in situations of armed conflict.
Bleh…..after 70 years….it still has to be funded? Did you catch that set of words ‘armed conflict’? Even the left leaning Huffington Post agrees, the Palestinians DON’T want peace.
The Palestinians not only have rejected one offer after another for a peaceful settlement in the past nearly 70 years, but also, tragically, their misguided actions now make any chance of an accord going forward still less likely.
Friday’s UN Security Council resolution is a case in point.
If the goal was to increase the chance of Palestinian statehood alongside Israel (and not in its place!), it was an abysmal failure, despite the lopsided vote. Those diplomats who rushed to applaud the outcome – and I’ll set aside thuggish countries like Venezuela that don’t bring a shred of good will to the UN table – should think twice about what they actually achieved.
If they wanted to excoriate Israel, a longstanding vocation of too many UN member states, then they can thump their chests, even if, alas, they habitually reserve such scrutiny for the only democratic nation in the Middle East. But for those truly committed to advancing prospects for peace, they took a big step backwards, once again falling into the Palestinian trap.
*** The Palestinians have a capital it is called Ramallah. 
And Israel has a capital, Jerusalem. 
photo
The Palestinians want peace, just not with Jews.
So, when the United States suspended funding to UNRWA….it was not all the funding, don’t be fooled. The United States gives an estimated $390,000,000 to UNRWA each year. Add that to the collection of other nations’ contributions and UNRWA is hardly out of business.
The United States administration froze a $125 million grant to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN’s agency for “Palestinian refugees”, which was supposed to be delivered on January 1, Channel 10 News reported on Friday, citing three Western diplomats.
The amount frozen is one-third of the annual funding the United States provides the organization, according to the report.
The three diplomats, who asked to remain anonymous because of the political sensitivity of the issue, told Channel 10 the grant had been frozen until the end of the reexamination of U.S. aid to the Palestinians, which began in recent days. According to the diplomats, officials in the administration have informed UN officials in the past two days that President Donald Trump is considering cutting this amount completely and could even increase the cut to $180 million, which would be half the total U.S. funding for UNRWA.
The cutting in the UN funding to UNRWA is a U.S. sanction against the organization, which has come under strong criticized from both the United States and Israel, as well as against the Palestinian Arabs, in an attempt to pressure them to renew peace talks with Israel.
News of the freezing of the grant came as a meeting took place in the White House discussing the cutting of aid to the Palestinian Authority and to UNRWA.
The meeting followed Trump’s tweets earlier this week in which he expressed doubt over the usefulness of American aid to the Palestinians, given their refusal to resume peace talks with Israel.
The United States is the largest single donor to UNRWA, providing approximately a fourth of the organization’s budget.
Reports in Israel on Thursday indicated that the Israeli Foreign Ministry is opposed to Trump’s planned cut in the aid to UNRWA, but on Friday Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett said that cutting aid to UNRWA is the correct move.
For years, UNRWA has been a target for criticism in light of Hamas’s activity in its educational institutions and the use of its facilities by Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations in Gaza.
UNRWA was documented storing Hamas rockets and weapons “designed to kill Israeli citizens” in its schools, a fact which the UNRWA chief admitted himself.
In addition, the organization has actively taken part in inciting anti-Semitic violence.
By the way, it is called a global diaspora regarding where and how many Palestinians live across the globe.
The countries outside the Palestinian territories with significant Palestinian populations are:
- Jordan 3,240,000
- Israel 1,650,000
- Syria 630,000
- Chile 500,000 (largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East).
- Lebanon 402,582
- Saudi Arabia 280,245
- Egypt 270,245
- United States 255,000 (the largest concentrations in Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles (History of Palestinians in Los Angeles)-San Diego).
- Honduras 250,000
- Guatemala est. 200,000
- Mexico 120,000
- Qatar 100,000
- Germany 80,000
- Kuwait 80,000
- El Salvador 70,000
- Brazil 59,000
- Iraq 57,000
- Yemen 55,000
- Canada 50,975
- Australia 45,000
- Libya 44,000
- Puerto Rico est. 30,000
- Greece est. 30,000
- United Kingdom 20,000
- Peru 19,000
- Denmark 15,000
- Colombia 12,000
- Japan est. 10,000
- Paraguay 10.000
- Netherlands 9,000
- Sweden 7,000
- Algeria 4,030
- Austria 4,010
- Norway 3,825
