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The United States has quietly frozen its aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) pending review,i24NEWS has learned. The move comes two months after Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, which aimed to force the PA to terminate its “pay-for-slay” policies of paying stipends to convicted terrorists in Israeli jails and to the families of dead terrorists.

The act orders that US assistance to the West Bank and Gaza “that directly benefits the PA” be suspended unless the Secretary of State certifies that the Palestinian Authority has met four conditions: terminating these payments to terrorists, revoking laws authorizing this compensation, taking “credible steps” to end Palestinian terrorism, and “publicly condemning” and investigating such acts of violence.

The Taylor Force Act was passed as part of an omnibus $1.3 trillion spending bill on 23 March 2018. It was named for the US army veteran who was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in Jaffa in March 2016, in an attack that injured eleven people.

A Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide told i24NEWS, “Our understanding is that US funding to the West Bank and Gaza is on hold pending an administration review.”

Separately, i24NEWS understands that the West Bank and Gaza office of USAID — the American international development agency — has not received its budget for the upcoming fiscal year and therefore has not been able to put its projects out to tender.

The funding freeze has caused the suspension of certain programs run by international agencies. An official at the HALO Trust, which performs landmine clearance operations in the West Bank, told i24NEWS that it had suspended operations because the United States had stopped transferring funds at the end of May, leaving a major funding shortfall.

The withholding of USAID’s total budget as well as third-party projects means the administration is taking an expansive interpretation of what assistance “directly benefits” the PA, viewing humanitarian projects that would otherwise need to be paid for by the PA as constituting direct assistance to that organization.

A Palestinian official confirmed the report, saying the Trump administration had told the PA in mid-January 2018 that it was reexamining its Palestinian aid budget. He said the United States had informed the PA after the emergency Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Istanbul in mid-May, which convened in protest at the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem and the situation in Gaza, that the assistance had been put on hold and placed under review.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks with US President Donald Trump in Washington on March 5, 2018 but now he returns home to what may be the most crucial stretch of his long career with corruption probes encircling him   MANDEL NGAN (AFP)

The United States was, till now, the world’s largest financial backer of the PA. Although it did not provide the PA direct budgetary assistance, unlike the European Union, it contributed massive funds for humanitarian projects in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as for UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency.

The total aid budget requested by the State Department for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 stood at $215 million annually for projects designed to boost the Palestinian economy, develop infrastructure, and boost institutional capacity among other goals.

The suspension of this aid means the Secretary of State has not certified that the Palestinian Authority has taken the steps the Taylor Force Act demanded. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has defended these payments as “social responsibility”.

The committee aide also confirmed that the State Department has submitted to Congress its criteria for determining assistance that directly benefits the Palestinian Authority, as the act required. The US State Department declined to share this unclassified report.

The PA has long had a policy of paying stipends to convicted terrorists in Israeli jails and to the families of dead militants. In 2017, the total budget for “prisoners’ payments” stood at $345 million, equivalent to half of the international contributions to the PA’s budget. The stipend is pegged to the length of the convicted terrorists’ prison sentences, meaning it is indirectly pegged to the severity of the crime.

The Trump administration slashed US payments to UNRWA in January 2018. UNRWA says $305 million have been withheld, plunging the agency into its “largest funding crisis ever” and forcing it to scramble for emergency contributions from other nations.

The funding cut comes at a time of an unprecedented diplomatic crisis between the United States and the PA, which is boycotting Trump administration officials and rejecting in advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan they intend to launch soon.

Eylon Levy is the i24NEWS investigative reporter. Twitter: @EylonALevy

Senior Middle East Correspondent Mohammed al-Kassim contributed to this report

Source: https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/177909-180624-exclusive-us-freezes-palestinian-aid-budget

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The promised Palestinian action Tuesday follows seven weeks of protests backed by Hamas, the terrorist group that seized control of Gaza in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas and the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad have launched dozens of rockets, mortar shells and kites carrying firebombs over the Gaza security fence in recent weeks. Israeli troops have killed over 100 Palestinians and injured thousands who tried to breach the fence.

Two Hamas terrorists attempted to breach the border fence with an axe Monday and Israeli forces shot one dead. One Hamas mortar shell landed in the yard of an Israeli kindergarten last week, shortly before the preschoolers were set to arrive. The attacks on Israel from Gaza are part of Hamas’ relentless campaign to destroy the Jewish state.

But while Hamas poses the most immediate threat to Israeli security, promoting stability and peace also depends on dealing with organizations such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which professes good intentions yet creates the conditions in which Hamas can thrive.

The Trump administration has been sharply critical of UNRWA, the U.N.’s special refugee agency devoted to Palestinians, and chose to withhold $300 million of the annual U.S. contribution to the agency.

UNRWA must stop hiring terrorists, stop letting its facilities be used by terrorists, stop glorifying martyrdom, stop erasing Israel from maps, and stop encouraging Palestinians to hold onto a right of return that actually undermines a potential two-state solution.

After the extensive violence in Gaza in the past few weeks, some influential Europeans are also speaking out, including Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis of Switzerland, UNRWA’s eighth-largest donor.

“By supporting UNRWA, we are keeping the conflict alive,” Cassis said. “It provides ammunition to continue the conflict,” he explained, by fueling “unrealistic” hopes that all Palestinian refugees will someday live in what is now Israel.

The foreign minister has a point. In April and May, tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered in Gaza for the Great Return March, an intermittently violent attempt to overrun the border with Israel. While Hamas deserves most of the blame, we should not ignore the role played by UNRWA.

The marchers were not interested in a two-state solution or in preventing the U.S.’s embassy move to Jerusalem. What they want is to reclaim physically every square inch of Israel – not just lands Israel took in 1967 – that UNRWA has taught them is theirs.

On the final day of the march, organizers falsely claimed that  Israeli soldiers were fleeing, even as they were reinforcing their positions, while Hamas officials lied about the border fence being breached.

Hamas led Palestinians to charge into a military zone, risking death and injury. UNRWA never literally encouraged Gazans to storm the border – as Hamas and march organizers did – yet its indoctrination motivated them to march to their deaths.

The Palestinian dream of a mass return to Israel is just that: a dream. Israel will never consent to an influx of millions of aggrieved Palestinians.

Nonetheless, UNRWA’s mandate directs it to worsen this tension by preserving the Palestinians’ refugee status, rather than resettling them in neighboring countries – the preferred approach of the U.N.’s primary refugee agency, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Furthermore, UNRWA treats Palestinians as refugees even if they are living in Palestinian-controlled lands. It also incentivizes them to live in UNRWA camps rather than becoming self-sufficient. Thus, refugee camps pepper the landscape in Gaza and the West Bank, the territories that would constitute a Palestinian state under any likely peace agreement.

Maintaining these refugee camps undermines the prospect of a two-state solution by offering Palestinians false hope that they will return to Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, and encourages Palestinians to hold out for their maximalist demands. It also justifies Israeli fears that the Palestinians would not be content with a return to the 1967 borders that existed before the Six- Day War.

Further impairing prospects for peace, UNRWA extends refugee status to those who claim to be descendants of the original Palestinian refugees from 1948. From an initial refugee population of around 700,000, according to UNRWA, the current number of Palestinians receiving UNRWA aid has ballooned to 5.4 million.

In fact, Foreign Minister Cassis noted: “The word refugee in this case no longer corresponds to the meaning we attach to it.” Palestinian refugees in Jordan, which he visited, are “third-generation families” with Jordanian passports, living in cities called refugee camps.

Bringing all these Palestinians to Israel would make Jews a minority in the world’s only Jewish state. It would dramatically increase the prospect of future conflict reminiscent of the wars of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Education, a major component of UNRWA’s aid program for Gaza, has become a means of encouraging Palestinian obduracy. UNRWA textbooks, schools, and teachers entrench maximalist Palestinian demands, including the right of return to land that has been part of Israel since the Jewish state gained independence from Britain in 1948.

IMPACT-Se, an organization that monitors and evaluates school textbooks across the Middle East, produced a damning report on the Palestinian Authority textbooks used by UNRWA in Gaza. Last year’s report found that the Palestinian Authority curriculum promotes a Palestinian right of return, martyrdom, violence, demonization of Israel and religious bigotry.

Anti-Israel and anti-Jewish indoctrination of Palestinian children begins very early in both UNRWA and non-UNRWA schools. As Fox News reported this week: “A shocking video recently surfaced that allegedly shows a play at a preschool in the Gaza Strip where children dressed up as commandoes and performed a mock hostage-taking and execution of an Israeli soldier.”

The Fox News story links to the chilling video, which is clearly designed to produce a new generation of Palestinian terrorists.

UNRWA has a lot of work to do in order to justify the restoration of U.S. funding, which amounted to approximately a quarter of the agency’s budget.

UNRWA must stop hiring terrorists, stop letting its facilities be used by terrorists, stop glorifying martyrdom, stop erasing Israel from maps, and stop encouraging Palestinians to hold onto a right of return that actually undermines a potential two-state solution.

Until then, UNRWA will be aiding and abetting the Palestinians’ march towards national disaster.

The post UN agency fuels Palestinian attacks against Israel first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The conference will seek to maintain international engagement in delivering assistance to the Syrian people and host communities, in addition to providing an opportunity to discuss the political situation in the war-torn nation on a global level, it added.

The first day of the conference ( April 24) will bring together around 200 NGOs from Syria and the region for dialogue with UN agencies, ministers of refugee-hosting countries and international donors, it pointed out.

In light of the latest developments in Syria, the EU reaffirms that only a political solution will ensure lasting stability in the country, through the efforts of the UN Special Envoy for Syria as well as the UN-led process to achieve an intra-Syrian political solution.

Meanwhile, the ministerial sessions on Wednesday will cover all key aspects of the conflict, which include political and humanitarian factors, in addition to economic recovery for the region.

According to EU sources, the foreign ministers of Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Jordan and the Prime Minister of Lebanon are due to attend the conference, while it remains to be seen if Iran and Russia will participate in any capacity.

The Gulf Cooperation Council, Islamic Development Bank, Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, along with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) are also expected to be present.

The first Brussels Conference last year produced a sum USD 6 billion in humanitarian and development aid to Syria and the region, while donors pledged a sum of USD 3.7 billion for the years 2018-20, in addition to USD 30 billion in loans.

According to the EU, USD 7.5 billion in grants was contributed by donors for Syria and neighboring countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt) in 2017, exceeding by 26% the original pledge of USD 6 billion, while a total of USD 2.4 billion was contributed as of March 2018. Out of the USD 30 billion worth of loans pledged for the period 2016-2020, more than half (57% or USD 17.2 billion) have been contributed so far. The Brussels conferences on Syria and the region follows similar initiatives such as the London Conference of February 2016, which was held under the leadership of the United Kingdom, Germany, Kuwait, Norway and the UN. International donors pledged significant financial aid for Syria, as well as civilian stabilization measures to strengthen resilience in host communities, building on the commitments made at the three previous pledging conferences in Kuwait from 2013-15, the EU information added.

Source: https://www.kuna.net.kw/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=2722476&Language=en

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