National security adviser John Bolton plans to announce the PLO office’s closure in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative group, on Monday, Sep 10. (photo: Fabrice Coffrini / AFP / Getty Images)
National security adviser John Bolton also plans to threaten sanctions against International Criminal Court.
All of this is making sure the U.S. will never ever play the role of the peacemaker. — Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian representative to Washington
The Trump administration is expected to announce Monday that it will close the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington, administration officials said Sunday night, widening a U.S. campaign of pressure amid stalled Middle East peace efforts.
“The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel,” national security adviser John Bolton planned to say in a speech he is scheduled to deliver Monday, according a draft of his prepared remarks reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“The Trump administration will not keep the office open when the Palestinians refuse to take steps to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel,” he is planning to add.
Senior Palestinian officials strongly condemned the Trump administration decision and described it as a “reckless escalation.”
This decision could cause the collapse of these two respected hospitals [Augusta Victoria Hospital and St. John Eye Hospital] serving the Palestinian community. — Dave Harden, former head of USAID in the West Bank and Gaza
The director of an East Jerusalem hospital said Sunday that a US decision to cut funding to hospitals serving the Palestinians will have a “severe effect.”
Bassem Abu Libdeh, of the Makassed hospital, said that the US currently covers 40 percent of costs in six East Jerusalem hospitals that provide care for Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Trump administration announced on Saturday it was cutting $25 million funding from the East Jerusalem Hospital Network, saying it would redirect the money toward “high-priority projects elsewhere.”
Nassim Ammour, 11, scores a goal as he plays with friends next to the Israeli barrier in the Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem, May 4, 2018. (photo: Ammar Awad / Reuters)
The organization now serves more than five million Palestinian refugees.
No matter how often attempts are made to minimize or delegitimize the individual and collective experiences of Palestine refugees, the undeniable fact remains that they have rights under international law and represent a community of 5.4 million men, women and children who cannot simply be wished away. — UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat threatened to expel UNRWA from Jerusalem, in the first public statement by an Israeli official that called on the government to use its power to shut down the agency that services Palestinian refugees.
“UNRWA is a foreign and unnecessary organization that has failed miserably,” Barkat said in a speech he delivered Monday morning in Jerusalem at a conference sponsored by Channel 2. “I intend to expel it from Jerusalem.”
Barkat explained that he had already instructed his municipal staff to come up with a plan to replace the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which he plans to present to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He spoke just three days after the US State Department announced that it intends to permanently halt its annual contributions to UNRWA, which last year amounted to $360 million out of the organization’s one billion dollar budget. Netanyahu publicly stated his support for that decision. Continue reading “Jerusalem mayor: I want to expel UNRWA”
Trump stresses “unshakable” bond between US and Israel during Jerusalem speech, May 23, 2017. (photo: ABC News)
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, has tended to the needs of Palestinian refugees for nearly seven decades — if President Trump has his way, it will soon be out of business.
Past US administrations were also slanted toward the Israelis, but what’s different today is that the usual mitigating factors in decision-making, such as American national security interests and the desire to at least appear evenhanded, no longer seem to be present. Instead we have domestic politics and ideology in their purest form dictating US policy on this issue. — Khaled Elgindy, fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy
On Friday, the Trump administration said it would cease funding the UN agency, which was launched in 1949 to provide for more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in what is now Israel. Relying on volunteer donors — of which Washington has been the largest — UNRWA has had its mandate renewed repeatedly by the UN General Assembly as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has dragged on. Over the decades, the population of Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories and now-semi-permanent camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon has ballooned to around 5 million, encompassing the descendants of the original exiles.
The White House, along with Israel’s right wing, argues that the rolls of recognized refugees should be limited to those alive in 1949 — a move at odds with other U.N. operations that also confer refugee status upon the descendants of the displaced. At a conference in Washington last week, Nikki Haley, Trump’s envoy to the United Nations, bemoaned the “endless number of refugees that continue to get assistance” and how “the Palestinians continue to bash America.” . . .
“There is only one thing that perpetuates the situation of refugees, including Palestinian refugees, and that is the extraordinary failure of the international community to bring about a just and fair and inclusive solution to the conflict,” Pierre Krähenbühl, UNRWA’s commissioner general, said to The Washington Post’s Ruth Eglash.
A Jewish man carries a rifle at a protest against Palestinian statehood in the Jewish-only settlement of Kiryat Arba, near the Palestinian town of Hebron. (photo: Bernat Armangue | AP)
The Israeli Nation State Law is the hallmark of an unfree people living in fear.
From its very inception, the State of Israel passed laws that limit the rights of Palestinians in all areas of life — from citizenship rights to the right to political participation, land and housing rights, education rights, cultural and language rights, religious rights, and due-process rights.
Who needs a Nation State Law? What does the insistence and the passing of a law that states Israel’s exclusive rights to the land and the state mean? Since many laws and the reality on the ground make it seemingly obvious that Israel is already a state for Jews, one would think this law is redundant at least, if not totally unnecessary.
So is Israel’s government suffering from a serious case of insecurity? The question why this law was necessary is particularly interesting considering that the Knesset, the Israeli house of representatives, has legislated dozens of laws that make certain that within occupied Palestine — or Israel — Jews are privileged and that the Jewish and native Palestinian communities remain completely segregated from each other. This law added nothing that was not already stated in other laws. Palestinians, in comparison, do not seem to need a law that says they have a right to the land and that their language is superior to others. Still, this Israeli government, which claims Israel has historical rights that date back to biblical times, felt the need to pass this law.
A poster of the U.S. President Donald Trump is set on fire during the annual anti-Israeli Al-Quds, Jerusalem, Day rally in Tehran, Iran. June 8, 2018Ebrahim Noroozi,AP
Slashing funds for the Palestinians is a radicalizing gift for terrorists — and a ticking time bomb for Israel’s security.
The question is: will this doctrine bring peace, or will more, and potentially escalated, violence prevail? After all, in our region, poverty has been a breeding ground for radical recruitment, violence, and terrorism.
Over the weekend two indicators of the Trump Doctrine for the Middle East emerged. The first was an announcement from the US Department of State that $200 million earmarked for the aid for the Palestinians will be “redirected” from the West Bank and Gaza and be spent in accordance with U.S. national interests. USAID has been involved in developing Palestinian agriculture and infrastructure development — roads, and water supply and treatment.
The second, a leaked report that the Trump administration will announce at the beginning of September 2018 that it will cut its financial support for the operations of the UN’s Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the West Bank. The beneficiaries of these operations include include 809,738 registered refugees, 19 refugee camps, 96 schools with 48,956 pupils, two vocational and technical training centers, 43 primary health centers, 15 community rehabilitation centers and 19 women’s program centers. . . .
The purpose of the project is to enliven and enrich the South Sound community with Middle Eastern films and allied arts, and to raise funds for the upcoming Shuruq IV: Olympia Arab Festival taking place at The Olympia Center on October 6, 2018.
The film festival will feature the following:
2 PM: The Prophet, an animated children’s film based on the writings of Lebanese-American writer, poet, and visual artist Khalil Gibran. Exiled artist and poet Mustafa embarks on a journey home with his housekeeper and her daughter; together the trio must evade the authorities who fear that the truth in Mustafa’s words will incite rebellion.
5 PM: Persepolis, an adult animated biographical comedy-drama film, based on Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name, about a precocious and outspoken Iranian girl growing up during the Islamic Revolution.
8 PM: Naila and the Uprising, a documentary, chronicles the remarkable journey of Naila Ayesh whose story weaves through the most vibrant, nonviolent mobilization in Palestinian history — the First Intifada in the late 1980s.
Photography exhibit, “A Day in the Life of Yemen,” showcasing the work of Luke Somers, a British-born American freelance photographic journalist and resident of Yemen, who was held hostage and killed by al-Qaeda in 2014.
Children’s activities, film Q&A sessions, and opportunities to get involved with RCF.
“Peace Works, a cornerstone project for RCF, is always an opportunity for us to creatively engage with community members on issues of injustice and struggle, and this year is no different. We are all too aware of the polarization and oppression occurring in communities around the country, including our own, and we hope that through film and allied arts, we can amplify the voices that are all too often silenced,” stated Whitney Faulkner, RCF Executive Director.
Above all, [BDS] has underscored an awkward issue that cannot be indefinitely neglected: whether Israel, even if it were to cease its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, can be both a democracy and a Jewish state.
The movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel — known as BDS — has been driving the world a little bit mad. Since its founding 13 years ago, it has acquired nearly as many enemies as the Israelis and Palestinians combined. It has hindered the efforts of Arab states to fully break their own decades-old boycott in pursuit of increasingly overt cooperation with Israel. It has shamed the Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah by denouncing its security and economic collaboration with Israel’s army and military administration. It has annoyed the Palestine Liberation Organization by encroaching on its position as the internationally recognized advocate and representative of Palestinians worldwide.
It has infuriated the Israeli government by trying to turn it into a leper among liberals and progressives. It has exasperated what is left of the Israeli peace camp by nudging the Palestinians away from an anti-occupation struggle and towards an anti-apartheid one. It has induced such an anti-democratic counter-campaign by the Israeli government that it has made Israeli liberals fear for the future of their country. And it has caused major headaches for the Palestinians’ donor governments in Europe, which are pressured by Israel not to work with BDS-supporting organizations in the Palestinian territories, an impossible request given that nearly all major civil society groups in Gaza and the West Bank support the movement. . . .
A Palestinian woman rides in a car after collecting aid provided by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNWRA, in Gaza City, Jan 17, 2018. (photo: Mohammed Abed / AFP)
[The US] will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation. — US State Department statement
The loss of this organization could unleash an uncontrollable chain reaction. — German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas
The Trump administration announced Friday it is cutting nearly $300 million in planned funding for the UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees, and that it would no longer fund the agency after decades of support. Instead, it said it would seek other channels by which to aid the Palestinians.
The administration castigated the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for failed practices, and indicated that it rejected the criteria by which UNRWA defines Palestinian refugees, whereby the UN agency confers refugee status not only on original refugees but on their millions of descendants. . . .
Israeli army soldiers take position during clashes with Palestinian stone throwers in the West Bank city of Hebron on Aug 3. (photo: Abed Al Hashlamoun / EPA-EFE)
The rising generation of American Jews is increasingly alienated from Israel. They say they’re tired of the fantasy, a defensive story of half-truths. Yet many American Jewish community leaders, while wringing their hands over the lost generation, persist in the sanitized approach to teaching young people about Israel. They argue that it’s simply not possible to instill a love of Israel while exposing its faults. They are wrong.
I didn’t want to take my kid to the West Bank city of Hebron. A few years ago, a former Israeli paratrooper had guided me through the silent, “sterilized” streets of its old city, free of any Palestinian presence. I saw Hebrew graffiti triumphantly sprayed on sealed homes and shops, walked by the checkpoints that ensure complete separation of the Jewish and Muslim populations. Hebron is not an easy place to be — I wasn’t sure my 14-year-old was ready for it.
My family and I travel to Israel as often as we can. Our kids’ bedtime stories are tales of the struggles and triumphs of the Jewish people, our people. They have learned Hebrew as a living language. They love Israeli culture and food and they FaceTime their cousins in Tel Aviv nearly every day.
And we speak honestly and critically with them about what’s happening in Israel, just as we do about what’s happening in the United States. We talk about the miracles and the missteps, the dreams fulfilled and those unrealized. And now, at 9, 12 and 14, they’re old enough to begin to understand the complexities.
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