JERUSALEM (AP) – The United Arab Emirates drastically reduced its funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in 2020, the year it signed a United States-mediated standardization agreement with Israel that was heavily criticized by the Palestinian Authority.
The agency known as UNRWA provides education, health and other vital services to some 5.7 million registered Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, mainly descendants of the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from Israel during the 1948 war around of your creation.
The United Arab Emirates donated US $ 51.8 million to UNRWA in 2018 and again in 2019, but in 2020 they gave the agency just US $ 1 million, said agency spokesman Sami Mshasha on Friday after being first reported by the Israeli media.
“We really hope that in 2021 they will return to the levels of previous years,” he said.
Emirati officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Saturday.
Last year, the United Arab Emirates normalized relations with Israel, breaking an old Arab consensus that recognition should only come in exchange for concessions in the peace process with the Palestinians, which has been dying for more than a decade.
Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco signed similar agreements soon after, in what the Trump administration considered a historic diplomatic achievement. President Joe Biden welcomed the deals and said he would encourage the resumption of direct peace negotiations.
The Palestinian Authority, however, saw the deals as a betrayal and harshly criticized the United Arab Emirates. This may have led the federation of oil-rich sheiks, which include Dubai and Abu Dhabi, to cut aid.
UNRWA critics say it perpetuates the refugee problem created by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the Palestinians’ demand for a “right of return” for refugees and their descendants. Israel strongly rejects the idea of a right of return, which, if fully implemented, would leave the country with a Palestinian majority.
The Trump administration cut all funding for UNRWA in 2018, one of several unprecedented measures it has taken to support Israel and isolate the Palestinians. The US had already given the agency about $ 360 million a year.
The Biden government announced last month that it would restore aid to Palestinians, including refugees, and says it will work to reactivate peace negotiations. The two sides have not held substantive peace talks since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office in 2009.