Amid aid cuts, Jordan to host fundraiser for Palestinian refugee agency

Jordan will host a fundraiser at the United Nations headquarters in New York next month to keep the agency for Palestinian refugees afloat, the kingdom’s top diplomat said Thursday.

Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said the meeting, set for September 27 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, “aims to provide financial and political support to UNRWA.”

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees has been struggling to balance its books since the United States announced in January it was cutting its annual funding by $300 million.

The Jordanian foreign minister said the New York event aims to “close the gap and put in place a plan that will ensure UNRWA’s continued, ongoing funding for the coming years.”

It will also “reaffirm that UNRWA is an organization created by the UN General Assembly, with a clear and particular role, and this role must continue,” Safadi added.

حماية #الأنروا وضمان تمويلها لتمكينها المضي بدورها إزاء اللاجئين وفق تكليفها الأممي أولوية #أردنية تتعاون المملكة مع الوكالة والمجتمع الدولي لتحقيقها. بحثت الجهود لدعم الوكالة مع المفوض العام @PKraehenbuehl الحفاظ على أنروا يمثل احترام حق اللاجئين في العيش الكريم والعودة والتعويض pic.twitter.com/pwZOWSP1zh

— Ayman Safadi (@AymanHsafadi) August 30, 2018

Speaking alongside the Jordanian foreign minister, UNRWA Director Pierre Krahenbuhl said the agency needs $200 million to continue its work until the end of this year.

“We’re talking about human beings. We cannot wish 5.3 million Palestinian refugees away… these are people who have rights and for many years now, for decades, have faced a plight and an injustice that is simply immense,” said Krahenbuhl.

The agency supports some five million registered Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and provides schooling for 526,000 children in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

But UNRWA has warned it currently only has the funds to keep its 711 schools open for the next month.

By the end of September, “UNRWA won’t have a penny,” the agency’s spokesman Chris Gunness warned Wednesday.

The agency was created in 1949 to support 750,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes during the war surrounding the creation of Israel. Several tens of thousands of them still alive today, along with their millions of descendants, are classified as refugees.

Israel accuses UNRWA of helping to perpetuate the Palestinian narrative of Israel’s illegitimacy by, uniquely, granting refugee status to the descendants of refugees, even when they are born in other countries and have citizenship there, conditions that do not apply to the refugees cared for by the UN’s main refugee agency, UNHCR, which cares for all other refugees worldwide. The population of Palestinian refugees thus grows each year.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged that funding for Palestinian refugees be maintained, but not through UNRWA. Rather, he has called for it to be transferred through the UN’s main refugee body, UNHCR.

Israel has often criticized UNRWA, accusing it of sheltering terrorists and allowing Palestinians to remain refugees even after settling in a new city or country for many generations, thus complicating a possible resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has contributed $60 million to the agency in 2018, compared to more than $360 million last year.

Last week his administration announced further cuts to Palestinian aid, slashing $200 million in funding for programs in Gaza and the West Bank.

Relations between Washington and the Palestinian Authority nosedived after Trump in December formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The Palestinian leadership has suspended contact with the US administration and says Washington can no longer play a mediation role in the Israel-Palestinian peace process.