U.S. State Department says the decision came following Trump-ordered review meant to ensure that American taxpayer funds were ‘spent in accordance with US national interests.’ Apparently, Palestinians are still spending most of the money on paying terrorists who kill Israelis and supporting their families while they are in jail or dead. America won’t be funding that anymore.
Times of Israel This $200 million is in addition to the $300 million that Trump already cut from UNRWA (UN Relief & Works Agency), which runs schools and provides other kinds of free medical services for Palestinians. UNRWA U.N. agency for so-called Palestinian ‘refugees’ to cut 1,000 jobs after U.S. cuts more than $300 million in annual funding
This is not the first time Trump has cut longstanding aid bound to the Palestinians. In January, the White House announced it also would withhold $65 million in assistance to the UNRWA relief agency for Palestinians.
Earlier this month, the administration released millions of dollars in frozen aid to the PA, but only for Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation, an administration source said.
The funds withheld Friday are directed toward health and educational programs, as well as initiatives to make Palestinian governance more efficient. They are used both in the PA-administered West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
With most of the US funding gone, Palestinians will have find other countries to make up the difference. Or how about building up their own economy instead of living on handouts from the world?
With the US funding most of their school and healthcare costs, Palestinians have been free to spend money on teaching young people military-style exercises at a summer camp (below) organized by the Islamic Jihad movement in the southern Gaza Strip. Hundreds between the age of six and 16 would participate in the summer camp where they receive military as well as religious training.
TRT World The United Nations agency dealing with Palestinian refugees may not be able to open schools for half a million children because it has run out of money since the United States cut its funding, UN officials say.
UNRWA already faces what it described as a “very tense” situation in Gaza after job cuts drew protests by its own employees, leaving some senior staff unable to work in their offices.
UN officials say that aid cuts by the US, the single largest donor to UNRWA, were a major cause of the crisis. In January, US President Donald Trump said he would scale back aid to the Palestinians unless they cooperate with his plans to revive peacemaking with Israel. Those peace efforts stalled in 2014.
“The actions that we are now seeing are consequences of the decision by the Trump administration to withhold $305 million for UNRWA this year, so whether it is political or not, it has catastrophic implications and consequences for us on the ground,” said Gunness.
In January Trump tweeted, “we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel.”
Palestinian schools might not be able to open this fall. Guess they’ll have to choose between sending their kids to school and funding terrorists for life.
Times of Israel The Trump administration said the terror group’s control of Gaza was one of the main reasons it wanted to cease its aid to the coastal enclave.
“This decision takes into account the challenges the international community faces in providing assistance in Gaza, where Hamas control endangers the lives of Gaza’s citizens and degrades an already dire humanitarian and economic situation,” the State Department official said. (DIRE? What a joke, Gaza is filled with luxury shopping malls, 5-star restaurants ad clubs, water parks, sports facilities, and so much food, Gaza women are among the most obese in the world)
The official did not give an exact amount of the funds to be cut, but said it is more than $200 million that was approved in 2017. The US had planned to give the Palestinians $251 million for good governance, health, education and funding for civil society in the current budget year that ends September 30.
But with just over a month to go before that money must be used, reprogrammed to other areas or returned to the Treasury, less than half has actually been spent.
Friday’s move was immediately castigated by the Palestinians, who said the cuts were “cheap blackmail.”
What would happen if Donald Trump flew in a couple of pallets of shrink wrapped Monopoly Money? Make believe money for a make believe Nation!
Thank You, Thank You to President Donald J. Trump for STOPPING the Extortion Payments to the Terrorist “Non-Country” that calls itself Palestine.
This is another Big Promise made to the American Taxpayers & KEPT!
When I learned that our Hard-Earned Money was being given to the Palestinian Terriorists, I exploded. Yes, this has been going on for years, & at last, a President with the Guts to say NO. Again, a BIG THANK YOU to President Trump, Keep Up the GREAT WORK TO MAGA!
Trump is the best! If other countries want to continue funding the corrupt pallies, they will have to suck more funding out of their steadily diminishing pool of taxpayers (they are already over-financing the parasitic muslimes that are bleeding their welfare system dry, and many of the natives will soon be leaving in droves, if they have not already done so).
The UN will collapse and Europeans countries will suffer huge financial losses. An undoing of their own making.
I’ve sais it before and i’ll say it again,……
Why is the US funding the UN at all?
STOP funding the UN, its broken and run by those who appose you.
Aussie.
I agree! We need to stop funding the UN. Let them try to get by without us……and I think we should get out of the UN…. Did you know if there is a crisis the president can call in UN troops to do whatever to American citizens??
Im sure Germany will pay this money…
Some years ago Germany send an so called “Rapper” to Gaza on taxpayers money…
He rapped about Martyrs etc!
He or his parents came on Asyl…
President Trump, please stop all funding for the corrupt Palestine organization and while doing so, I hope that President Trump will stop all funding for the corrupt UNations. Time to stop the atrocities and the terror that these two organizations cause in the world.
“Palestinian” (Jordanian) Muslim savages have been using the at least $10 billion of American taxpayers to award families of Muslim suicide bombers in Israel, building elaborate tunnels under the border from Gaza Strip into Israel to sneak in their terrorists, and fund multiple “Intifada”, simultaneous shooting and stabbing assaults against IDF and Israeli civilians.
Close the loop …. stop funding US public schools …. let parents decide what their children learn …. internet home schooling …. no more brick and mortar schools …. on line all the time ?
“….by another $200 million?!!” FGS, how much ‘welfare’ ARE they collecting?
If we in the so-called “rich” countries can make our countries function without collecting eternal welfare from other societies, surely it’s about time the useless, eternal leeches like the palestinians, haitians and Africans made some effort; did something other than dancing, fornicating and killing each other.
“United States has been the largest donor of aid to the Palestinians since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994. This aid has totaled around $600 million annually” http://archive.is/0qYSA
That’s at least $10 billion of American taxpayers’ money that went to pockets of “Palestinian” Muslim terrorists unconditionally without reason. No wonder these Muslim savages (including cousins and other relatives of “Cockroach” Sarsour and “Jihad-A-Wad”, current director of CAIR-Muslim Brotherhood terrorists) didn’t work but spent all their time stabbing Israelis and throwing rocks at IDF for decades.
These terrorists might actually have to work now.
How much of these money has been routed to Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Nusra, ISIS and financed Muslim terrorist attacks worldwide, including USA?
How much of these $10 billion could benefit US infrastructure, schools, hospitals, highways, airports, fund medicaid, benefits for veterans, or … build the wall?
That’s great. Since both leaders. Abbas and Hamas, are the problem, Trump is attempting to cut out the worst of the problem which will make it easier for future negotiations.
Great move. A side effect will be to discover which countries are really supporting the moslemites. Why should the U.S. pay to train moslemite terrorists.
As it should be. If they only want to spend money to try to kill Israelis, they must not be funded 1 cent to do so. To fund them is to reward their evil behaviour.
Phuck these Palestinian scumbags. Do not send a dime of our tax dollars to these savage heathens.
So funny. The mistake is ever funding them & their terrorism in the first place. We all know Muslums never accept a loss, always try to regain their advantage.
What people also need to know is that the Palestinians in particular & all Muslums in general have been silently & purposefully waging population jihad through the years, to eventually take over by sheer numbers. Muslums admit this & talk about it all the time.
In the past, high death rates counteracted this, but with advances in medicine in even the poorest areas, their numbers have increased exponentially to the point our governments think we have to support them & let them into our countries since theirs are bursting at the seams. It’s like a bacterial infection- it will keep getting worse & won’t go away unless treated with a bactericide.
In the meantime, cut all their funding!
It’s a pity that there isn a disease that would target moslems specifically……you would think with their filthy bathroom habits and other personal Koran commanded habits that they would come down with something fatal…..
LW, but there is. It’s the result of mass inbreeding. One of Britain’s major health crises now is inbred Muslim babies born with severe mental and/or physical defects…which is costing the NHS a fortune.
Good news for a change! Donald Trump has achieved more during his time in the White House than Obama ever has, during the two terms he was President!
And why the hell should the USA spend even so much as one dollar on these savages that live in the Gaza
Strip? Everyone knows by now that some of that money would go to paying “salaries” to those terrorists who murder Israelis, and also Americans who visit Israel, like for instance Taylor Force who was knifed to
death in Tel Aviv. Why should American citizens have to put up with paying for this through the taxes they pay?
So glad Trump was elected for office,and replaced that imbecile Obama and his accomplice crooked Hillary!
America deserve better than those two morons.
I expect that Trudeau will step up to the plate and saddle Canadian taxpayers with that one too…after all….
We’re paying annually, over $600 million to fund overseas abortions….an Obama initiative that President Trump derailed……