JERUSALEM: Palestinian hospitals in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem expressed regret Monday over a US cut of $25 million in funding but said they hoped to be rescued by the Palestinian Authority and foreign donors.
The US State Department said on Saturday it was “redirecting” the aid on the orders of President Donald Trump.
“Those funds will go to high-priority projects elsewhere,” a State Department official said.
The money had been earmarked for the East Jerusalem Hospitals Network, which groups six medical institutions in the mainly Palestinian part of the city.
“The East Jerusalem Hospitals Network deeply regret the decision by the US administration to cut the funding for the six east Jerusalem hospitals,” the group’s secretary, Walid Nammour, told a news conference.
In the past, the US funds made it possible for many Palestinians to get specialized treatment — such as cardiac surgery, neonatal intensive care or children’s dialysis — unavailable in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to the World Health Organization.
A statement by the hospitals network called on “the Palestinian government, the US Congress and the international community” to help resolve the funding gap.
Nammour welcomed an announcement on Sunday by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority that it would make up the deficit.
“This is great news for us,” Nammour said. “We can continue to provide essential services that are not available in other hospitals in Gaza or the West Bank.”
But Sunday’s statement by PA health minister Jawad Awad gave no indication how it could pass funds to the hospitals network, given Israel’s blanket ban on PA activity anywhere in the city it claims as the capital of the Jewish state.
The cut is just one of Trump’s sanctions against the Palestinians, coming after his decision to cancel support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and pull the plug on more than $200 million in bilateral aid.
On Monday the State Department confirmed it was ordering the closure of the Palestinian diplomatic mission in the US capital, saying the Palestinians were not supporting peace talks with Israel.
Trump has been seeking to pressure the Palestinian leadership, which is boycotting the White House, to negotiate as his team pursues a plan for Middle East peace — what he calls the “ultimate deal.”
“You’ll get money, but we’re not paying you until we make a deal,” he said in Washington on Thursday. “If we don’t make a deal, we’re not paying.”
Jerusalem’s Palestinian hospitals ‘deeply regret’ US aid cut
Jerusalem’s Palestinian hospitals ‘deeply regret’ US aid cut
- Palestinian Authority steps into the breach as US cuts $25 million in funding to hospitals in east Jerusalem
- The US State Department said it was redirecting the aid on the orders of President Donald Trump
High-level Turkish team to visit Damascus on Monday for talks on SDF integration
- The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal
ANKARA: A high-level Turkish delegation will visit Damascus on Monday to discuss bilateral ties and the implementation of a deal for integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into Syria’s state apparatus, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.
The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal. But Ankara accuses the SDF of stalling ahead of a year-end deadline.
Turkiye views the US-backed SDF, which controls swathes of northeastern Syria, as a terrorist organization and has warned of military action if the group does not honor the agreement.
Last week Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara hoped to avoid resorting to military action against the SDF but that its patience was running out.
The Foreign Ministry source said Fidan, Defense Minister Yasar Guler and the head of Turkiye’s MIT intelligence agency, Ibrahim Kalin, would attend the talks in Damascus, a year after the fall of former President Bashar Assad.
TURKEY SAYS ITS NATIONAL SECURITY IS AT STAKE
The source said the integration deal “closely concerned Turkiye’s national security priorities” and the delegation would discuss its implementation. Turkiye has said integration must ensure that the SDF’s chain of command is broken.
Sources have previously told Reuters that Damascus sent a proposal to the SDF expressing openness to reorganizing the group’s roughly 50,000 fighters into three main divisions and smaller brigades as long as it cedes some chains of command and opens its territory to other Syrian army units.
Turkiye sees the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and says it too must disarm and dissolve itself, in line with a disarmament process now underway between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Ankara has conducted cross-border military operations against the SDF in the past. It accuses the group of wanting to circumvent the integration deal and says this poses a threat to both Turkiye and the unity of Syria.
