Rich Gulf nations fail to honor pledges to help Syrian refugees!

We already knew, for years,  Gulf Arab nations love to pledge hundreds of millions of petrodollars to help their Palestinian brethren - and often fail to pay up.

Now, the UN is saying that they are doing the same thing - to the real refugees in real danger from Syria:

Mr. Panos Moumtzis, Regional Refugee Coordinator for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said unfortunately, the dramatic deterioration of the situation inside Syria was continuing to have serious implications for the region. Three-quarters of those fleeing were women and children.

As of today, (9 April) the figures had reached 1.3 million refugees registered. This was a significant increase as 12 months ago, the figure was 30,000. The 1.3 million represented 120 per cent of the planning figure which was thought to be reached by June 2013.

Funding for operations currently sat at 31 per cent as UNHCR had requested $1 billion for the Regional Response Plan, though only received $300 million. This acute shortfall meant that a breaking point had been reached. The public services provided by host countries had been stretched to the maximum, or depleted, and they required support from the international community. In addition, the deterioration of the situation in Syria maintained the outflow of refugees, and without support, there were concerns for the regionalisation of the conflict.

...Answering questions, he said UNHCR was waiting for the materialisation of the bulk of the pledges made in Kuwait by the Gulf States (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates had each pledged $300 million for the humanitarian needs of refugees) and it was hoped these would arrive soon. The modality of the pledging process was that the money could be passed to United Nations agencies, though other pledges were made through national agencies. How exactly the aid was delivered was not the concern, it was more that the pressing needs of the refugees were met.

Yet again, the West is shown to care more about Arab lives than Arabs do!

I always maintained that the reason Gulf states wouldn't pay their pledges to the PA was because they were sick of the Palestinian issue, the infighting and the inability to compromise to make peace already with Israel.

This case is different. In this case, there is a real humanitarian crisis, not a manufactured one. There are real refugees, not descendants.  Here we have a real need to help people who simply cannot help themselves, as opposed to Palestinian Arabs who simply whine that they deserve more and more.

But the rich oil states are not paying up even here.

It looks more like they are simply selfish jerks who like to talk big but run away when asked to make good on their promises.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)