BEIRUT: Losing significant funding from its largest donor, the US, could be “catastrophic” for Palestinians, said a UN agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees.
Last week, President Donald Trump said the United States may withhold future aid payments to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) over what he called the Palestinians’ unwillingness to talk peace with Israel.
A State Department official later said that no decision had been made on payment.
The United States is the largest donor to the agency, with a pledge of nearly $370 million as of 2016, according to UNRWA’s website.
The UN agency, founded in 1949 to aid Palestinian refugees, provides educational and health services in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
“The human impact of losing significant funding could be catastrophic in the real lives of real people whom the UN is mandated to protect,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a statement.
“Palestine refugees are among some of the most vulnerable people in the Middle East. Our health services offer a life line, quite literally, to vulnerable women and children, the sick and the elderly,” he said.
On Tuesday the Swedish ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, said he was concerned that a withdrawal of funding for UNRWA “would be very negative both in terms of humanitarian needs of over 5 million people but also of course it would be destabilising for the region.”
Gunness said there was much at stake for the Palestinians.
“Even the most modest shock in a fragile society can have an inordinate impact and the consequences could be profound, widespread, dramatic and unpredictable,” he said.
Relations between the Palestinians and Washington soured last month after Trump announced the US would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, generating outrage across the Arab world and concern among Washington’s Western allies.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they seek to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
US State Department spokesman Steve Goldstein told a briefing in Washington on Thursday that US funding for UNRWA was still under consideration and that no decision had yet been made.
Impact on Palestinians could be ‘catastrophic’ if US pulls funding — UN agency
Impact on Palestinians could be ‘catastrophic’ if US pulls funding — UN agency
Somali president visits city claimed by breakaway region
MOGADISHU: Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on Friday visited a provincial capital claimed by the breakaway region of Somaliland -- the first visit there by a sitting president in over 40 years.
The visit to Las Anod, the administrative capital of the Sool region, comes amid heightened diplomatic tensions in the Horn of Africa after Israel officially recognised Somaliland, drawing strong opposition from Mogadishu.
Mohamud was attending the inauguration of the president of the newly created Northeast State, which became Somalia's sixth federal state in August.
It was the first visit by a Somali president since 1984.
Somalia is a federation of semi-autonomous states, some of which have fraught relations with the central government in Mogadishu.
The Northeast State comprises the regions of Sool, Sanaag and Cayn, all territories Somaliland claims as integral to its borders.
Somaliland had controlled Las Anod since 2007 but was forced to withdraw in 2023 after violent clashes with Somali forces and pro-Mogadishu militias left scores dead.
Mohamud's visit "is a symbol of strengthening the unity and efforts of the federal government to enforce the territorial unity of the Somali country and its people", the Somali president's office said.
