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..... ....Yes, contrary to what one might expect, the Government of Israel wanted continued U.S. payments to UNRWA, fearing that their termination might cause a new intifada, the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, or renewed warfare with Hamas. Also, Jerusalem sees UNRWA as a lesser evil than alternative recipients of the money, such as the PA. ..... And even if no one replaced U.S. donations, denying UNRWA money does not get to the heart of the problem, which lies not in its sponsored activities but in its perpetuating and expanding population of "Palestine refugees" in three unique, even bizarre ways:...

Having survived the recent cabinet reshuffle the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, is confronted with the biggest headache of her short ministerial career: the fallout of the US intention to cut funding to UNRWA, which constitutes one of the most serious challenges to UK policies in the Middle East. Donald Trump’s threat to cut financial assistance to the UN agency specifically responsible for Palestinian refugees will be a disaster not only for the refugees but also for Israel and neighbouring countries. It does not advance US interests either. Provoked by the Palestinian rejection of Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as...

UNRWA – which employs 11,500 employees in Gaza alone – should be radically revamped, if not disbanded altogether. 3 minute read. A Palestinian woman takes part in a protest against possible reductions of the services and aid offered by United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), in front of UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City August 16, 2015.. (photo credit: REUTERS/MOHAMMED SALEM) The US under the leadership of President Donald Trump is rightly reconsidering the logic of funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine – at least as it operates presently. Some $125 million, which makes up about...

TEL AVIV — The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which ministers to so-called Palestinian refugees, would not comment when asked by Breitbart Jerusalem to provide the total number of Palestinian “refugees” that UNRWA services in Lebanon. This after Lebanon’s census data recently placed the number of Palestinian “refugees” living in the country at about one third of the nearly 500,000 reported by UNRWA. UNRWA runs camps and projects for so-called Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. On its website UNRWA claims “5.1 million refugees” are “covered by our protection mandate,” purportedly including about 500,000...

The Trump administration has reportedly suspended $125 million in aid for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the special UN agency that deals specifically with so-called Palestinian refugees. Barack Ravid of Israel’s Channel 10, writing at Axios.com, notes: The move comes after the Palestinian Authority suspended their contacts with the Trump administration in response to its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. A senior White House official said no decision have been made yet, but confirmed that a review of the U.S. assistance to the Palestinians is underway “in light of the Palestinians’ recent conduct.”...

It was probably a coincidence that US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley hailed the Iranian anti-regime protesters and threatened to end US financial support for UNRWA – the UN Palestinian refugee agency – and the Palestinian Authority more generally in the same briefing. But they are integrally linked. It is no coincidence that Hamas is escalating its rocket attacks on Israel as the Iranian regime confronts the most significant domestic challenge it has ever faced. As IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said this week, Iranian assistance to Hamas is steadily rising. Last August, Hamas acknowledged that Iran...

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...

The Trump administration has frozen $125 million in funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees, according to three Western diplomats who were informed of the move. They said the funding, one third of the annual U.S. donations to the agency, was supposed to be transferred by Jan. 1 but was withheld. Why it matters: A funding freeze could be seen as a slap against the organization — which the U.S. and Israel consider to be biased against Israel and too politicized — and an attempt to pressure the Palestinians to return...

As the UN General Assembly voted to reject America’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, US Ambassador Nikki Haley issued a stern warning: We’ll remember this the next time you come calling for more hard-earned American taxpayer dollars. Most nation-states called her bluff, leaving many to wonder what comes next. If President Trump wants to use his financial leverage at the United Nations to strike at the heart of the anti-America, anti-Israel institutional infrastructure, he should look no further than the agency responsible for Palestinian refugees: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. By most definitions, refugees are...

Egyptian Daily Close To Egyptian Intelligence Reveals Minutes Of Secret Palestinian Authority Meeting With John Kerry, Susan Rice; U.S.-Palestinian Coordination On UNSC 2334; Rice Says Trump Administration's Policy Will Be 'Dangerous' In mid-December 2016, a Palestinian Authority (PA) delegation met in Washington with officials from the outgoing Obama administration for secret talks. On December 27, the Egyptian daily Al-Youm Al-Sabi', which is close to Egyptian intelligence services, published an exposé of the minutes of the secret talks. According to the report, by Ahmed Gomaa, the Palestinian delegation included PLO Executive Committee secretary and negotiating team leader Saeb Erekat; Palestinian...

A Palestinian Authority refugee receives a budget four times larger than a Syrian, Iraqi or African refugee, according to a study conducted by the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, ahead of Sunday's visit to Israel by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Yediot Ahronot reported on Sunday. At the end of last week, the UN Refugee Agency (UNRWA), which deals only with Palestinians, released its annual financial report, which in 2016 generated an average of $246 for each of the 5.3 million Palestinians it defines as a refugee, while the United Nations High Commissioner...

UNRWA should be forced to make a choice. Either show some backbone and not participate in advancing a curriculum in its schools that directly contradicts the two-state solution the UN claims it supports, or lose all funding from the United States The spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General António Guterres issued a statement on Monday on behalf of the Secretary General strongly defending the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The statement defended UNRWA against what the Secretary General considered to be unfair criticism. The statement expressed the Secretary...

Zakaria al-Agha, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), on Sunday condemned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's call for the disbanding of UNRWA, after terror tunnels were discovered underneath one of its schools in Gaza. Al-Agha noted that this is not the first time that Israel has sought to dismantle UNRWA over allegations that the UN agency incites against Israel and supports terrorism. He added that the Palestinian people are devoted to a solution to the “refugee problem” in accordance with Resolution 194 of the UN General Assembly in the context of a comprehensive agreement that...

UN Watch today demanded that UNRWA Chief Pierre Krahenbuhl apologize for using images of a girl from a bombed-out Syrian building as part of a global campaign to raise money for the organization by pretending the girl is a Gaza victim of Israeli actions. UNRWA is now running the above photo on Facebook and in paid Twitter ads. It is also now UNRWA’s cover page photo on both Facebook and Twitter. UNRWA's narrative of the photo tells of a girl named Aya from Gaza who is said to be 11 years old now, and who has suffered from the Israeli...

WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 2, 2017 – Before a joint subcommittee hearing today of the U.S. Congress concerning the U.N., Israel, and the Palestinians, the director of the independent monitoring group UN Watch will testify and present a new report showing 40 alarming new cases of UNRWA school teachers in Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria whose Facebook pages incite to Jihadist terrorism and antisemitism, including by posting Holocaust-denying videos and pictures celebrating Hitler.UN Watch sent letters this morning to U.N. chief António Guterres, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and U.S. envoy to the U.N. Nikki Haley, urging them to take...

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced that it would begin its official investigation by the into the ties between UNRWA and terrorist organizations and incitement in official Palestinian Authority textbooks after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20. The GAO is the supreme audit institution of the US government and provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for Congress. The investigation was requested by Senator James Risch (R-Idaho), the Chairman of the Senate Near East Subcommittee, following briefings on UNRWA’s indiscretions to Congress by the Center for Near East Policy Research over the past few years. Sen. Risch requested...

Israel said Sunday that the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) supports Hamas and demanded the UN investigate the agency and its head, Peter Hansen.

The new Arab city of Rawabi being built in Samaria (Shomron) with Israeli approval refuses to allow “Palestinian refugees” from UNRWA camps to relocate to the city. This, despite past statements to the contrary, and the general impression that the need for a new Arab city was partly because of the suffering of said “refugees”, especially those still living in refugee camps. So reports investigative journalist David Bedein of Israel Resource News Agency. “The new Palestinian Arab city of Rawabi,” writes Bedein, “has publicized in all stages of its development that it would build schools that would promote peace and...

MEMRI: Palestinian Historian Dr. Ibrahim Al-Sinwar: Ancient Egyptians Had the Right to Force the Jews to Work Building Pithom and Raamses; Benjamin Franklin Warned against the Jews MEMRI No. 2260| November 16, 2009 Palestinian Historian Dr. Ibrahim Al-Sinwar: Ancient Egyptians Had the Right to Force the Jews to Work Building Pithom and Raamses; Benjamin Franklin Warned against the Jews Following are excerpts from an interview with Dr. Ibrahim Al-Sinwar, a lecturer on Islamic history at the Islamic University of Gaza. The interview aired on Al-Aqsa TV on July 31, 2009. To view this clip, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2260.htm Dr. Ibrahim Al-Sinwar: The...

Using funding from Western taxpayers, and Americans in particular, United Nations schools are teaching Arab children to glorify terrorism and wage constant war against their Jewish neighbors, according to a new film. In the explosive documentary released late last month by a pro-Israel watchdog group, schools run by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) are even exposed offering military-style training to young children. That training, combined with a curriculum that teaches fervent hatred of Jews, is a recipe for disaster, the producer said, citing the recent wave of attacks. But now, U.S. lawmakers are speaking out, with media reports...