LONDON: The Arab League and aid agencies on Wednesday warned of the devastating consequences of a US decision to freeze $65 million of Palestinian refugee funding.
The outcry came as the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas again blasted Donald Trump’s “sinful” decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Washington said on Tuesday it would provide $60 million to the UN Relief and Welfare Agency but would hold back a further $65 million. The US State Department said UNRWA needed to make unspecified reforms.
Both the head of the Arab League and the chief of the UN agency warned that holding back the money would exacerbate hardship, and effect education and health for some of the region’s most vulnerable people.
More than half a million boys and girls in 700 UNRWA schools could be affected by the fund cut, as well as Palestinian access to primary health care.
The cut in funding will effect Gaza in particular, where UNRWA helps much of its population of 2 million.
UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl said he would appeal to other donor nations for money and launch "a global fundraising campaign" aimed at keeping the agency's schools and clinics for refugees open through 2018 and beyond.
"At stake is the dignity and human security of millions of Palestine refugees, in need of emergency food assistance and other support in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip," Krähenbühl said.
He also warned that the move risks further instability in the region by contributing to the conditions that feed extremist ideologies.
In a Twitter post earlier this month, Trump said that Washington gives the Palestinians "HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect.”
Trump added that "with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?"
The US State Department said Washington had been UNRWA’s single largest donor for decades and insisted the decision to freeze the funding was taken to encourage other countries to help pay for and reform the agency.
Some US official had wanted to cut all aid to Palestinians while others were concerned about the humanitarian and diplomatic fallout.
Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit said halting the money was aimed at wiping out the whole Palestinian refugee issue.
"This decision affects the education and health of Palestinians and aims to eradicate the question of refugees," he said.
Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization said the White House was "targeting the most vulnerable segment of the Palestinian people".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called for a gradual cut in UNRWA funding and transferring its responsibilities to the UN global refugee agency, said he supported the move.
The freeze comes aid outrage among Palestinians over Trump’s decisions to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Palestinians want the city to be the capital of their future state and east Jerusalem has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
"Jerusalem will be a gate for peace only if it is Palestine's capital, and it will be a gate of war, fear and the absence of security and stability, God forbid, if it is not," a furious Mahmoud Abbas said at a conference in Cairo on Wednesday.
The Palestinian president, who initially described the decision as a "slap of the century," said the US has disqualified itself from continuing as a broker in any Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Netanyahu threw fuel on the fire on Wednesday by saying he was certain the US Embassy in Israel would be moved to Jerusalem sometime this year.
Moving the embassy was a key Trump foreign policy election pledge but US officials have said it is unlikely it would move from Tel Aviv before the end of the end his term in office.
The Cairo conference was organized by Al-Azhar, the primary seat of learning for the world's Sunni Muslims.
Earlier, Al-Azhar's grand imam and Egypt's top Muslim cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb, described Trump's Jerusalem decision as “unjust”. He said it must be countered by a revival of awareness of the Palestinian question.
— With AP, AFP and Reuters
Warnings over ‘devastating’ US decision to freeze Palestinian refugee funding
Warnings over ‘devastating’ US decision to freeze Palestinian refugee funding
Egypt mourns death of Iran’s president
- The Egyptian president expressed Egypt’s solidarity with the leadership and people of Iran during this tragic time
CAIRO: Egypt mourned the deaths of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
Egypt’s presidency said in a statement: “It is with deep grief and sorrow that the Arab Republic of Egypt mourns the death of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and their escorts on Sunday in a tragic crash.
“President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi extends his sincere condolences to the people of Iran, asking Allah to envelop President Raisi and the deceased with his mercy and grant solace and comfort to their families.”
The Egyptian president expressed Egypt’s solidarity with the leadership and people of Iran during this tragic time.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry extended his condolences to the Iranian government and people over the deaths of Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian, according to ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid.
A helicopter carrying Raisi, Amir-Abdollahian, and several other officials crashed in mountainous terrain in the country’s northwest on Sunday. On Monday, Tehran announced the deaths of Raisi, Amir-Abdollahian, and their accompanying delegation in the crash.
Israel calls ICC prosecutor’s bid for PM arrest warrant a ‘historical disgrace’
- Katz denounced the move as a “scandalous decision” that amounted to “a frontal attack... on the victims of October 7“
- The minister added that Israel would establish a special committee to fight the ICC prosecutor’s efforts to secure a warrant
JERUSALEM: Israel on Monday slammed as a “historical disgrace” an application by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The prosecutor, Karim Khan, applied for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as top Hamas leaders on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that Khan “in the same breath mentions the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense of the State of Israel alongside the abominable Nazi monsters of Hamas — a historical disgrace that will be remembered forever.”
The prosecutor said he was seeking warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for crimes including “wilful killing,” “extermination and/or murder” and “starvation.”
Katz denounced the move as a “scandalous decision” that amounted to “a frontal attack... on the victims of October 7” when Hamas launched their attack on Israel, sparking the Gaza war.
The minister added that Israel would establish a special committee to fight the ICC prosecutor’s efforts to secure a warrant, and also embark on a diplomatic push against it.
Katz said he planned to “speak with foreign ministers in leading countries of the world so that they oppose the prosecutor’s decision and announce that, even if orders are issued, they do not intend to enforce them on the leaders of the State of Israel.”
35,562 Palestinians killed in Gaza offensive since Oct. 7 — health ministry
- 106 Palestinians were killed and 176 injured in the past 24 hours
DUBAI: More than 35,562 Palestinians have been killed and 79,652 injured in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
One hundred and six Palestinians were killed and 176 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
Source close to Hezbollah says 4 dead in Israeli strikes on Lebanon
- The source close to Hezbollah told AFP that “at least four Hezbollah fighters were killed in Israeli raids on two different sites in southern Lebanon“
- The Israeli military said fighter jets struck “a Hezbollah terrorist cell”
BEIRUT: A source close to Hezbollah said four fighters were killed Monday in south Lebanon, with the Iran-backed group announcing two dead and a retaliatory attack, while Israel claimed strikes.
Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, has traded near daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces since the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
The source close to Hezbollah told AFP that “at least four Hezbollah fighters were killed in Israeli raids on two different sites in southern Lebanon,” identifying the locations as Naqura on the coast and Mais Al-Jabal, a border village to the east.
The Shiite Muslim movement said two of its fighters, both from Naqura, had been killed, without providing further details.
The Israeli military said fighter jets struck “a Hezbollah terrorist cell” and a launch post in the Mais Al-Jabal area, while Israeli army “artillery fired to remove a threat” in the Naqura area.
Hezbollah said it launched a heavy rocket attack at an Israeli army barracks in the country’s north “in retaliation” for the Naqura strike, while also announcing other attacks on Israeli positions.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported Israeli strikes on Mais Al-Jabal and Naqura, where it said Israel fired near Hezbollah-affiliated rescue personnel and wounded a civilian.
The fighting has killed at least 423 people in Lebanon, mostly militants but also including 82 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Israel says 14 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed on its side of the border.
The violence has raised fears of all-out conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, which went to war in 2006.
War monitor says Israeli strikes kill six pro-Iran fighters in Syria
- A Hezbollah source said that at least one fighter from the group was killed in Israeli strikes in the Qusayr area
Beirut: A war monitor said at least six pro-Iran fighters were killed Monday in Israeli strikes in Syria near the Lebanese border, in an area where Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group holds sway.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “Israeli strikes targeted two positions of pro-Iran groups in the Homs region,” including “a Hezbollah site in the Qusayr area” near the border where “six Iran-backed fighters were killed.”
The Observatory did not specify their nationalities.
A Hezbollah source told AFP that at least one fighter from the group was killed in Israeli strikes in the Qusayr area.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow its arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.
On Saturday, the Observatory said an Israeli drone strike near the Lebanese border targeted a vehicle carrying “a Hezbollah commander and his companion,” without reporting casualties.
Hezbollah did not announce any deaths among its ranks on Saturday.
On May 9, Israeli strikes on Syria targeted facilities belonging to Iraq’s Al-Nujaba armed movement, the Observatory and the pro-Iran group said, with Damascus saying an unidentified building was attacked.
The Israeli military has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war in its northern neighbor in 2011, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.
But the strikes increased after Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip began on October 7, when the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group launched an unprecedented attack against Israel.
Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions more since it erupted in 2011 after Damascus cracked down on anti-government protests.
