06 August 2018•Update: 07 August 2018
By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON
President Donald Trump's point person for Mideast peace is seeking to scrap the UN agency responsible for providing services to displaced Palestinians, and strip them of their refugee status.
Foreign Policy magazine obtained emails from Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, in which the ardent pro-Israel advocate said, "It is important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA," referring to the UN's Palestine refugee agency.
The email, dated Jan. 11, was sent to several senior Trump administration officials, including Trump’s Middle East peace envoy, Jason Greenblatt.
“This [agency] perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help peace,” Kushner wrote, according to Foreign Policy.
The magazine said the initiative has resulted in at least two bills in Congress that are seeking to upend UNRWA and strip Palestinians either displaced internally or throughout the region of their refugee status.
The effort is seeking to remove the status of Palestinian refugees from final-status talks between Israel and Palestinians, which is where the issue has traditionally sat.
Foreign Policy reported Friday that Kushner sought to have Jordan strip Palestinians living in the country of their refugee status during a trip to the country in June as part of an effort to halt UNRWA's operations there.
“[Kushner said] the resettlement has to take place in the host countries and these governments can do the job that UNRWA was doing,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said, according to the magazine.
Anadolu Agency reported last week on one of the bills, introduced by Republican Representative Doug Lamborn, which seeks to limit U.S. funding for UNRWA to solely fund the resettlement of refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Should it become law, the legislation would halt Washington’s funding for the bulk of UNRWA’s activities, which include schooling, food, health services and microfinance for the 5.3 million refugees and internally displaced people it aids.
Victoria Coates, a senior advisor to Greenblatt, said in an email to the White House's national security staff that the White House is seeking to come up with a way to eliminate the U.S.'s UNRWA funding after moving earlier this year to halve a $125 million funding installment.
“UNRWA should come up with a plan to unwind itself and become part of the UNHCR [UN High Commissioner for Refugees] by the time its charter comes up again in 2019,” Coates wrote, according to Foreign Policy.
A senior western diplomat, warned during conversations with Anadolu Agency that folding UNRWA into UNCHR could backfire, saying doing so could result in inflating the Palestine refugee figure, and increase pressure for Palestinians to be returned to their homeland.
“Be very careful what you wish for, because for UNHCR the preferred priority or choice would be for refugees to go back home, which is not something I suppose these American congresspeople would want,” the diplomat said.
The U.S. has long been by far UNRWA’s largest funder, most recently allocating roughly $365 million for the agency annually.
