Let's look at the reasons being given to continue funding UNRWA:
“Given the long, trusted, and historic relationship between the United States and UNRWA, this reduced contribution threatens one of the most successful and innovative human development endeavors in the Middle-East,” UNRWA chief Pierre Krähenbühl said in a statement.UNRWA schools use the same curriculum as their host countries. So how, exactly, does UNRWA reduce radicalization if it is teaching the same thing as everyone else?
“The reduced contribution also impacts regional security at a time when the Middle East faces multiple risks and threats, notably that of further radicalization.” he said.
“At stake is the access of 525,000 boys and girls in 700 UNRWA schools, and their future,” he said. “At stake is the dignity and human security of millions of Palestine refugees, in need of emergency food assistance and other support in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At stake is the access of refugees to primary health care, including pre-natal care and other life-saving services. At stake are the rights and dignity of an entire community.”
Emergency food assistance and pre natal care is a small part of UNRWA's budget. The bulk is education. As far as I can tell, the only education system in the world run by the UN is that of UNRWA.
And no one is explaining why that needs to be the case.
As far as dignity is concerned - since when is raising three generations of stateless people dependent on aid "dignified"?
“The US Administration seems to be following Netanyahu’s instructions to gradually dismantle the one agency that was established by the international community to protect the rights of the Palestinian refugees and provide them with essential services,” said Hanan Ashrawi on behalf of the PLO Executive Committee.
“This administration is thereby targeting the most vulnerable segment of the Palestinian people and depriving the refugees of the right to education, health, shelter and a dignified life,” she said.
The PLO official too said that shaving $65 million off the US donation would destabilize the region.
“It is also creating conditions that will generate further instability throughout the region and will demonstrate that it has no compunction in targeting the innocent,” she said, adding that, “Once again the US Administration proves its complicity with the Israeli occupation.”Ashrawi is falling back on the always popular Arab trope that any change will bring "instability," a code word for terrorism.
As if the region has been the model of stability in the 69 years since UNRWA was established!
No one is saying that people who would starve without UNRWA rations should be cut off. But the idea that the UN should be responsible for the education of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children (about 1/3 of all school kids in the territories) is obviously wrong: UNESCO estimates that 69 million teachers need to be hired worldwide to achieve educational goals by 2030, does anyone say they must be UN employees?
UNRWA services in the territories should be eliminated. Those "refugees" live in their own land, and should be taken care of the PA. And everyone knows it.
UNRWA services in Jordan to Jordanian citizens who are of Palestinian descent must be eliminated as well. Jordan is their country, why create two classes of Jordanian citizens? Why does no one care about this discrimination?
Once those two things are done, then UNRWA can make a case about how it is needed in Syria and Lebanon, where Palestinians are discriminated against. But don't whine about how the UN must provide free schools to Palestinians but no one else in the world.