JERUSALEM: Palestinian refugees on Thursday welcomed the US announcement that it will renew humanitarian aid, marking a break with the Trump era.
President Joe Biden’s administration said on Wednesday that it will provide $235 million to the Palestinians and restart funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which assists 5.7 million registered Palestinian refugees.
It was the clearest sign yet of Biden’s apparent intent to repair ties with the Palestinians, who boycotted the Trump White House for most of his tenure, accusing him of pro-Israel bias.
“We are happy,” said Ahmed Odeh in Bethlehem’s Deheisheh refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “The former American administration tried to stop these funds to the Palestinian people.”
“Any funding for the refugee camps and the refugees is out of good will and is good for us ... people are not working or making money, especially during the pandemic,” said Subhi Allian, 71, outside an UNRWA clinic in Far’a refugee camp near Tubas.
Most UNRWA-registered refugees are descendants of 700,000 Palestinians who were driven out of their homes or fled fighting in the 1948 war that led to Israel’s creation.
Many want the right to return to their families’ former lands in pre-1948 Palestine, lands which now lie in Israel. Israel rejects any such right as a demographic threat to its Jewish majority.
In a Twitter video late on Wednesday, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations, voiced “disappointment and objection” about the renewal of funding to the refugee agency without reforming it.
“UNRWA schools regularly use materials that incite against Israel and the twisted definition used by the agency to determine who is a refugee only perpetuates the conflict,” he said. “It should not exist in its current form.”
The Biden plan will provide $150 million to UNRWA and agency officials hope it will lead to more donations from the United States and others.
However, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told Reuters that the agency would “still struggle” amid reduced donations from elsewhere and cuts to their overseas development budgets by Australia and Britain.
Two priorities were COVID-19 and Lebanon, where last week he found residents of the country’s largest Palestinian refugee camp to be more desperate than he had ever known them.
“When I was in Ein Al-Hilweh people were saying ... that either ‘we die from COVID or we die from hunger’ or the last choice would be to try to cross the sea to go to Cyprus,” he told Reuters.
“Basically, they say the situation today is between three different types of death for the people. That’s how desperate and stressful the situation is.”
Palestinian refugees welcome US decision to restart aid
https://arab.news/wbqz9
Palestinian refugees welcome US decision to restart aid
- President Joe Biden’s administration said on Wednesday that it will provide $235 million to the Palestinians
Washington presses Syria to shift from Chinese telecom systems
- Syria is exploring the possibility of procuring Chinese technology
- It was unclear whether the United States pledged financial or logistical support to Syria to do so
DAMASCUS: The United States has warned Syria against relying on Chinese technology in its telecommunications sector, arguing it conflicts with US interests and threatens US national security, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
The message was conveyed during an unreported meeting between a US State Department team and Syrian Communications Minister Abdulsalam Haykal in San Francisco on Tuesday. Washington has been coordinating closely with Damascus since 2024, when Syria’s now President Ahmed Al-Sharaa ousted longtime leader Bashar Assad, who had a strategic partnership with China.
Syria is exploring the possibility of procuring Chinese technology to support its telecommunications towers and the infrastructure of local Internet service providers, according to a Syrian businessman involved in the procurement talks.
“The US side asked for clarity on the ministry’s plans regarding Chinese telecom equipment,” said another source briefed on the talks.
But Syrian officials said infrastructure development projects were time-critical and that Damascus was seeking greater vendor diversity, the source added.
SYRIAN OFFICIALS CITE US EXPORT CONTROLS AS TELECOMS BARRIER
Syria is open to partnering with US firms but the matter was urgent and export controls and “over-compliance” remained an issue, according to person familiar with the meeting in San Francisco.
A US diplomat familiar with the discussions told Reuters that the US State Department “clearly urged Syrians to use American technology or technology from allied countries in the telecoms sector.”
It was unclear whether the United States pledged financial or logistical support to Syria to do so.
Responding to Reuters questions, a US State Department spokesperson said: “We urge countries to prioritize national security and privacy over lower-priced equipment and services in all critical infrastructure procurement. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
The spokesperson added that Chinese intelligence and security services “can legally compel Chinese citizens and companies to share sensitive data or grant unauthorized access to their customers’ systems” and promises by Chinese companies to protect customers’ privacy were “entirely inconsistent with China’s own laws and well-established practices.”
China has repeatedly rejected allegations of it using technology for spying purposes.
The Syrian Ministry of telecommunications told Reuters any decisions related to equipment and infrastructure are made “in accordance with national technical and security standards, ensuring data protection and service continuity.”
The ministry said it is also prioritizing the diversification of partnerships and technology sources to serve the national interest.
Syria’s telecom infrastructure has relied heavily on Chinese technology due to US sanctions imposed on successive Assad governments over the civil war that grew from a crackdown on anti-government protests in 2011.
Huawei technology accounts for more than 50 percent of the infrastructure of Syriatel and MTN, the country’s only telecom operators, according to a senior source at one of the companies and documents reviewed by Reuters. Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Syria is seeking to develop its private telecommunications sector, devastated by 14 years of war, by attracting foreign investment.
In early February, Saudi Arabia’s largest telecom operator, STC, announced it would invest $800 million to “strengthen telecommunications infrastructure and connect Syria regionally and internationally through a fiber-optic network extending over 4,500 kilometers.”
The ministry of telecommunications says that US restrictions “hinder the availability of many American technologies and services in the Syrian market,” emphasizing that it welcomes expanding cooperation with US companies when these restrictions are lifted.
Syria has inadequate telecommunications infrastructure, with network coverage weak outside city centers and connection speeds in many areas barely exceeding a few kilobits per second.
