Originally posted to the Middle East Monitor website, 8 February 2021.
The United Arab Emirates sharply reduced its funding for the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in 2020, a spokesman revealed to AP.
Spokesman of the international body, Sami Mshasha, said that the UAE donated $51.8 million to UNRWA in 2018 and again in 2019, but in 2020 it gave the agency just $1 million.
The reduction in the UAE’s funding was first reported by Israeli media, AP said, adding that this reduction came in the same year that the Gulf state signed a US-brokered normalisation agreement with the occupation state of Israel.
“We really are hoping that in 2021 they will go back to the levels of the previous years,” the UNRWA spokesman said.
AP said that Emirati officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Saturday.
UNRWA provides education, health care, and other vital services to some 5.7 million registered Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.
These refugees are descendants of over 700,000 Palestinians who were forced out of their homes, villages, and cities by Zionist gangs in 1948 when Israel was created.
After US President Donald Trump took office in 2017, America steadily cut humanitarian and economic aid to the Palestinians. As a result, the Palestinian Authority and support groups such as UNRWA have suffered severe financial crises.
Link to original post: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210208-uae-sharply-reduces-its-support-for-unrwa/
