{"id":117836,"date":"2018-09-03T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=117836"},"modified":"2018-09-02T11:52:35","modified_gmt":"2018-09-02T10:52:35","slug":"there-is-a-deeper-darker-agenda-afoot-as-the-us-cuts-unrwa-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/09\/there-is-a-deeper-darker-agenda-afoot-as-the-us-cuts-unrwa-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"There Is a Deeper, Darker Agenda Afoot as the US Cuts UNRWA Funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Refugees are the final loose end in forcing Palestinians to accept Trump\u2019s \u2018deal of the century\u2019 peace plan.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2 Sep 2018 – <\/em>The Trump administration\u2019s decision to scrap all future aid payments to the main agency helping Palestinian refugees marks a new \u2013 and most likely disastrous \u2013 chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<\/p>\n

The US State Department said on Friday it would no longer continue its $360 million annual contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), depriving it of a third of its budget. US officials described the organisation as \u201cirredeemably flawed\u201d.<\/p>\n

The move follows an announcement last week that Washington had slashed $200 million from other aid programmes for the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

About five million Palestinians \u2013 many languishing for decades in refugee camps across the Middle East \u2013 rely on the agency for essential food, healthcare and education.<\/p>\n

Other states in the Middle East have reason to be fearful. Jordan\u2019s foreign minster, Ayman Safadi, warned on Saturday that the denial of aid would \u201conly consolidate an environment of despair that would ultimately create fertile grounds for further tension\u201d.<\/p>\n

Jordan, which hosts two million Palestinian refugees, has called a meeting at the UN later this month, along with Japan, the European Union, Sweden and Turkey, to \u201crally political and financial support\u201d for UNRWA.<\/p>\n

Traditional American and European backing for the UN agency could be viewed as reparations for their complicity in helping to create a Jewish state on the ruins of the Palestinians\u2019 homeland. That act of dispossession turned the Palestinians into the world\u2019s largest stateless population.<\/p>\n

Except there are few signs of guilt.<\/p>\n

The handouts provided via the UN have served more like \u201chush money\u201d, designed to keep the Palestinians dependent and quiet as western states manage a crisis they apparently have no intention of solving.<\/p>\n

That was why the European Union hurriedly promised to seek alternative funds for UNRWA. It noted that the agency was \u201cvital for stability and security in the region\u201d \u2013 a stability that has enabled Israel to disappear the Palestinians, uninterrupted, for seven decades.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration, by contrast, is more brazen about the new way it wishes to weaponise aid.<\/p>\n

US officials have not concealed the fact that they want leverage over the Palestinians to force them to submit to Donald Trump\u2019s long-promised \u201cdeal of the century\u201d peace plan.<\/p>\n

But there is a deeper and darker agenda afoot than simply reviving failed negotiations or pandering to the Trump administration\u2019s well-known antipathy towards international institutions.<\/p>\n

Over the past 25 years, peace talks have provided cover for Israel\u2019s incremental takeover of what was supposed to be a future Palestinian state. In the words of Palestinian lawyer Michael Tarazi, while Israel and the Palestinians were discussing how to divide the pizza, Israel ate it all.<\/p>\n

So Mr Trump\u2019s team has, in effect, reverse-engineered a \u201cpeace process\u201d based on the reality on the ground Israel has created.<\/p>\n

If Israel won\u2019t compromise, Mr Trump will settle the final-status issues \u2013 borders, Jerusalem and the refugees \u2013 in the stronger party\u2019s favour. The only hurdle is finding a way to bully the Palestinians into acceptance.<\/p>\n

In an indication of how sychronised Washington and Israel\u2019s approaches now are, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, made almost identical speeches last week.<\/p>\n

In an address to American Jewish leaders, Mr Friedman noted that a \u201cdifferent way of thinking\u201d prevailed in the Middle East. \u201cYou can\u2019t talk your way, you just have to be strong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The next day, Mr Netanyahu reiterated that message. He tweeted: \u201cThe weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

That sounded uncomfortably like a prescription for the Palestinians\u2019 future.<\/p>\n

Israel has already carved out its borders through the ethnic cleansing campaigns of 1948 and 1967. Since then, it has mobilised the settlers and its military to take over almost all of the remnants of historic Palestine. A few slivers of territory in the West Bank and the tiny coastal ghetto of Gaza are all that is left for the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

A nod from the White House and Israel will formalise this arrangement by gradually annexing the West Bank.<\/p>\n

As far as Jerusalem is concerned, Mr Trump recognised it as Israel\u2019s capital by moving the US embassy there in May. Now, even if it can be born, a Palestinian state will lack a meaningful capital and a viable economy.<\/p>\n

The final loose end are the refugees.<\/p>\n

Some time ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas surrendered their right \u2013 sanctioned in international law \u2013 to return to their former lands in what is now Israel.<\/p>\n

Instead, the question was whether Israel would allow the refugees encamped in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan to move to the West Bank and Gaza and become citizens of a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n

But if Israel refuses to concede a Palestinian state, even that minimal ambition is doomed.<\/p>\n

Israel and the US have an alternative solution. They prefer to dismantle UNRWA and disappear the Palestinians in the swelling tide of refugees spawned by recent western interventions in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Aghanistan. On Sunday Mr Netanyahu welcomed what he called a US move to \u201cabolish the refugee institution, to take the funds and really help rehabilitate the refugees\u201d.<\/p>\n

The US and Israel want the Palestinian refugees to fall under the responsibility of the UNHCR, the UN\u2019s umbrella refugee agency \u2013 or better still, their host countries.<\/p>\n

In a leaked email reported by Foreign Policy magazine this month, Jared Kushner, Mr Trump\u2019s son-in-law and adviser, wrote that it was time to \u201cdisrupt UNRWA\u201d. He added that \u201csometimes you have to strategically risk breaking things in order to get there\u201d.<\/p>\n

Central to that disruption is stripping millions of Palestinians of their status as refugees. The Trump administration is due to publish a report later this month, according to Israeli media, that will propose capping the Palestinian refugee population at 500,000 \u2013 a tenth of the current number.<\/p>\n

Mr Kushner has reportedly been leaning on Jordan to revoke the status of its two million Palestinian refugees, presumably in return for US compensation.<\/p>\n

When UNRWA\u2019s mandate comes up for renewal in two years\u2019 time, it seems assured Washington will block it.<\/p>\n

If there is no UNRWA, there is no Palestinian refugee problem. And if there are no refugees, then there is no need for a right of return \u2013 and even less pressure for a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n

Israel and the US are close to their goal: transforming a political conflict governed by international law that favours the Palestinians into an economic problem overseen by an array of donors that favours Israel.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of: <\/em>Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006); <\/em>Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008); and <\/em>Disappearing Palestine: Israel\u2019s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize<\/a> for Journalism.<\/em> The same year, Project Censored<\/a> voted one of Jonathan\u2019s reports, \u201cIsrael brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank\u201d, the ninth most important story censored in 2009-10.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jonathan-cook.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US State Department said on Friday [31 Aug] it would no longer continue its $360 million annual contributions to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, depriving it of a third of its budget. The move follows an announcement last week that Washington had slashed $200 million from other aid programmes for the Palestinians. Refugees are the final loose end in forcing Palestinians to accept Trump\u2019s \u2018deal of the century\u2019 peace plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":112686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}