After US aid cuts, Palestinian refugee agency woos international donors

JERUSALEM, Middle East - The UN agency that serves Palestinian refugees said on Wednesday it would launch a global fundraising appeal in hopes of making up for funding cuts announced by the United States.

The Trump administration on Tuesday suspended $65 million for UNRWA, demanding it undertake a "fundamental re-examination".

The US provides roughly one-third of UNRWA's budget, and the agency has warned that it now faces the "most dramatic financial crisis" in its nearly 70-year history. The agency provides healthcare, education and social services to 5 million Palestinians across the Middle East.

UNRWA's secretary-general, Pierre Krahenb��hl, said the fundraising appeal would begin in the coming days. The agency said it is too soon to say which countries will be approached to fill the void or what services are at risk.

Belgium has already stepped in to help, with an immediate disbursement of $23 million. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said on Wednesday that "for a lot of Palestinian refugees, the UNRWA is the last life buoy".

Among the group's projects are helping half a million children get an education and fending off attempts to radicalize them.

De Croo said he was responding to the global fundraising appeal in hopes of making up for funding cuts announced by the US. The $23 million is Belgium's allocation for three years, but De Croo's office said it would be "disbursed immediately."

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a step back on Thursday from comments, challenged by US President Donald Trump, that envisioned a one-year time frame for the planned relocation of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

An official in Netanyahu's office said the prime minister recognized that construction of a new embassy will take years but believes Washington is considering "interim measures that could result in an embassy opening much faster".

The official, who declined to be named, did not define those steps or mention any dates for a Jerusalem embassy to begin operating.

In the past, Israeli media have speculated that, before a building is ready, the US ambassador would operate part of the time out of a temporary location in Jerusalem.

Reversing decades of US policy, Trump in December recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and set in motion the process of moving the embassy from Tel Aviv, imperiling Middle East peace efforts and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike.

Afp - Reuters

(China Daily 01/19/2018 page11)