White House hosts Palestinian high school exchange students

A group of Palestinian high school students attended a reception at the White House on Wednesday to mark the start of their year-long exchange program in the United States.

US Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt tweeted that the reception was held in honor of the 15-year anniversary of the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program.

The program was founded by Congress in the wake of the September 11 attacks and provides scholarships for high school students from countries with significant Muslim populations to spend up to one academic year in the United States.

Greenblatt said that the 2018-2019 program included more Palestinian students than in any previous years.

https://twitter.com/jdgreenblatt45/status/1032367037929017344

Palestinian leadership has effectively cut ties with Washington since its December recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Since then the US has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, with the president linking the decision to the Palestinians’ refusal to speak with his administration.

Other countries have since provided additional contributions and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said earlier in the month that the additional funding meant that all 711 schools it runs for 526,000 pupils in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria would open for the coming school year but would require further funding to remain open.

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.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, has reportedly been pushing to remove the refugee status of millions of Palestinians as part of an apparent effort to shutter UNRWA.