Israel slams Biden's resumption of UNRWA funding for Palestinians
US restoration of funding does not included direct financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority. The US Taylor Force Act of 2018 prohibits such direct funding until such time as the PA halts it monthly payments to terrorists and their families. Funding for Palestinian security forces was excluded from that legislation.JCPA: The Palestinian Authority Tries to Bully Israel on the Jerusalem Issue
The Anti-Terror Clarification Act passed that same year had also created stumbling blocks to the provision of humanitarian assistance, but amendments to the legislation remove such impediments.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price clarified for reporters that all funding was legal under American law. “I just want to underscore that all of this aid is absolutely consistent with relevant US law, including those two statutes,” Price said.
Israel, however, took issue with US funding to UNRWA, which Trump had halted because he believes that the organized was flawed and a stumbling bloc to peace.
“The renewal of UNRWA assistance,” the Foreign Ministry said, “must be accompanied by substantial and necessary changes in the nature, goals and conduct of the organization.”
It added that the issue of UNRAW funding had come up in conversation between Israeli and American officials.
Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said he had also warned the State Department of the danger of such activity, particularly without ensuring that “incitement” and “anti-Semitic content” are removed from its educational curriculum.
“Israel is strongly opposed to the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity happening in UNRWA’s facilities,” Erdan said.
"We believe that this UN agency for so-called “refugees” should not exist in its current format. UNRWA schools regularly use materials that incite against Israel and the twisted definition used by the agency to determine who is a “refugee” only perpetuates the conflict.
Blinken, however, specifically mentioned support for UNRWA's education program.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York he hoped the US restoration of funding would sway other countries to do likewise.
“There were a number of countries that had greatly reduced or halted contributions to UNRWA. We hope that the American decision will lead others to rejoin... as UNRWA donors,” Dujarric said.
The PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas ordered the opening of an international campaign regarding the right of east Jerusalem residents to participate in Palestinian parliamentary elections despite the recommendation of senior Fatah figures to postpone the elections.Eli Lake: Biden Cannot Allow Iran to Keep Its Weapons Program
Mahmoud Abbas went to Germany for medical treatment, and his trip may be intended to prepare public opinion for the possibility of the elections’ postponement.
The PA launched an international campaign against Israel to bully and force it to agree to the participation of east Jerusalem residents in parliamentary elections on May 22, 2021.
At a meeting of the Palestinian government, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh revealed that the Palestinian Authority had sent letters on the issue to the UN, the European Union, the United States, and Russia, explaining that from their perspective, there was no impediment to allowing east Jerusalem residents to participate in the elections as they did in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections.
Wasel Abu Yousuf, a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, said that the participation of east Jerusalem residents in the parliamentary elections was of great importance when Israel was trying to make the city its unified capital.
Senior PA officials say that the PA wants to use the campaign for the participation of east Jerusalem residents to quash and erase the Trump administration’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Because of a last-minute U.S. concession in 2015, Iran never had to disclose the sites in question or other possible military dimensions of its program to the IAEA as a condition for the economic benefits promised in the JCPOA. As a result, the stringent inspection regime imposed by the agreement did not apply to the sites in this weapons program. Iran’s declared nuclear program was monitored, but its undeclared sites were not.
David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a co-author of an upcoming book on the Iranian archive, estimates there are nine sites revealed by the archive. These include facilities designed to build the nuclear core for a weapon and to conduct tests.
“Iran is not building nuclear weapons today,” Albright told me. “But it is preparing to do so. The program is designed to produce nuclear weapons on demand. And it will be able to make those weapons relatively quickly when a decision is made.”
At the very least, this is a major failure of the JCPOA. That deal was supposed to give the world confidence that Iran could not and would not produce a nuclear weapon. That it missed a huge weapons program is a sign of incompetence on the part of the Western countries that negotiated the pact.
More important, this weapons program is a sign of Iran’s duplicity. Even as it negotiated the JCPOA, Iran was not only holding blueprints for a nuclear weapon, but also maintaining a constellation of physical sites where it could eventually build one.
This is what’s wrong with the current talks in Vienna: The best the Biden administration can hope for from these negotiations is Iranian compliance with a flawed bargain. In exchange for that compliance, Araghchi is demanding the U.S. lift the very sanctions that are its best leverage to get Iran to come clean to the IAEA. That’s not a deal any U.S. president should make.