BICOM

The Trump Administration is to significantly reduce the number of Palestinians it recognises as having refugee status, according to media reports.

Israeli news site Hahadashot said that the US will announce next month that only 500,000 Palestinians will be recognised as refugees, rather than the five million people currently recognised by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees.

In addition, the US intends to freeze funding for UNRWA’s activities in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and Syria and to ask Israel to consider limiting its activities. The US currently funds about 30 per cent of the agency’s budget. Last year it transferred more than $360m to the organisation.

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said such a move “means that 526,000 children would not be in UN schools but would be on the streets; 270,000 of those are in Gaza, which means they would seek educational opportunities in establishments run by local authorities; 9 million patient visits in nearly 150 primary health clinics across the Middle East would not happen; and 1.7 million people would not get food assistance”.

In January, the US withheld half of its $125m payment to UNRWA pending a review of its activities. In response, the agency cut the number of teachers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and about 100 workers in 13 refugee camps in Jordan.

Israeli defence officials believe that efforts to weaken UNRWA could create a dangerous vacuum in the provision of basic services and schooling which, they warn, Hamas could exploit to undermine Israel’s security.

Jerusalem Minister Ze’ev Elkin said UNRWA has “perpetuated the Arab problem artificially in order to serve as a battering ram against the State of Israel,” adding that the solution for Palestinians in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon is in their host countries and that “they have no reason to dream about exercising the right of return”.

PLO Executive Committee member Dr Hanan Ashrawi said: “The US administration is demonstrating the use of cheap blackmail as a political tool. The Palestinian people and leadership will not be intimidated and will not succumb to coercion. The rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale.”

In June the UK brought forward £38.5m of its planned support to UNRWA, which included £10m on top of the £28.5m package of support announced by Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt at the Extraordinary Ministerial Conference on UNRWA in Rome in March. The UK donated £67m to UNRWA in 2017.