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Summary:
The US announced the funds given to the UN that support Palestinians will be cut by more than half. This action occurs two weeks after Trump threatened to pull funding. This controversial decision has received negative feedback from Palestine, positive praise from Israel, and it has caused concern from the UN because of the humanitarian impact of the decision.The United States was supposed to pay 125 million dollars to the United Nations Relief Works Agency, but now will only be paying 60 million dollars. This agency provides aid, medical care, and education to Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.
The State Department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, claims this decision was made with no intention to punish the Palestinians for refusing to negotiate with Israel. But a few weeks earlier Trump tweeted, "It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue..."
The UN had spoken out about these actions, and hopes that the US and Trump Administration will reverse the cut before it severely effects the Middle East.
Questions:
1. Do you believe Trump was justified in cutting the funds, or do you believe the Trump Administration should try to reverse the cut, and why?
2. If the funding remains as is, what do you think the UN should do?
7 comments:
Alas, Trump is walking around making dramatic and destructive decisions again. If his logic is valid, that we offer lots of monetary aid to Palestine yet Palestine refuses to come to the negotiating table, then his action at the very least has some degree of logic, but this is far too dramatic of a course of action. This will only boil over anger from Muslims, and promote further terrorist attacks. President Trump should focus more upon dialogue with the Palestinians in order to extract agreements and compromises.
Trump has some reason in that the current course of action for the past several decades have not made much progress if any in Palestinian Israeli relations, but designating Jerusalem as Israel's capital and cutting funding to the Palestinians clearly illustrates a preference that would discourage the Palestinians from coming to the table anyways. If funding stays cut, then I would hope the UN finds other countries to pick up the slack, since Palestinians are in need of aid after the decades of conflict and suffering they have faces. I agree with frank in that this is a melodramatic course of action and will be met with backlash by the Muslim community in the Middle East, which will not play out well for US actions and goals in the region.
Trump has, time after time, shown that the thing that matters the most to him in politics and all of his social and foreign relationships is acknowledgement. He expects to be thanked for everything by everyone and loves claiming credit, even for things that are very minor (releasing the UCLA basketball players) and not related to him (the fact that no one died on commercial airlines during his first year of presidency). This is perhaps one of most obvious red flags that he may not be fit to run a country, as he is in office for the wrong reason. He is an active president, but only for his own good. In this case, Trump is personally offended that Palestine is not grateful enough for the U.S.'s aid, which there is really no reason for, but because he needs acknowledgement and credit so badly, he is willing to pull aid in a rash decision. This just seems to be a bad sign for his presidency overall, and this has bigger implications because it is a hostile message towards Muslims in support of Israel.
I personally favor any action that reduces the United States foreign donations. I don't see why the US was obligated in the first place to give millions of dollars to Palestine. Palestine is the enemy of one of our close allies (Israel), isn't even a member of the UN, and has an irrelevant GDP. Instead of donating to poor countries why don't we instead use that money to help our own poor people. Therefore, I support Trump's policy and encourage him to further reduce our Palestinian funding.
I have a mixed opinion concerning this cut in funds for Palestinian support. On one hand, I think it is good that we are cutting back on spending, thus helping America deal with its own problems with more leeway. However, I think that cutting a large chunk of the funds for Palestinians is a bad idea. The Palestinians are not in the best situation and therefore having their fund cut would drastically reduce the chances Palestinians have of receiving a better life and education. Trump believes that cutting the budget is for the best, but there are probably better alternatives than cutting the budget for the Palestinians. Therefore, I believe that the budget should remain the same, and Trump should decrease funds for other programs that are extraneous.
I completely disagree with Matt and I would like to correct his notion of how this U.N. funding is being spent. First of all, allow me to point out that the United States gives more than $3,800,000,000 to Israel EACH YEAR in foreign aid. That is 3.8 BILLION DOLLARS per year, more than we give any other country. Including US contributions to the UNRWA, the humanitarian project that supports Palestinian refugees forced to flee from the violence in Gaza and the West Bank, the US has given Palestinians a grand total of $5.2 billion since 1994; in other words, in the next two years, Israel will get approximately 145% of what the Palestinians have received in the last 24 YEARS COMBINED. So, the notion that the US is denting its pocket book by giving "millions to the Palestinians" each year is totally false and misguided, as The Donald could probably afford pay this aid out of his personal savings. No, this cutting of aid is purely symbolic. But beyond being symbolic, it is a pathetic disgrace. The funds that are getting cut aren't direct aid to Palestine. They are in support of an apolitical humanitarian mission being carried out by the UN in order to serve refuges dispersed throughout the Palestinian territories and neighboring countries like Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. This money goes towards humanitarian purposes like providing clean water, medical
services, and education to children who have been forced from their homes. This move targets the most helpless portion of the Palestinian population and is politically equivalent to bombing a hospital.
As for the idea that the Palestinians aren't being grateful, allow me to ask what they have to be grateful for? The US is essentially funding all of Israel's military, which has occupied the Palestinian territories and has implemented an apartheid on the Palestinians, forcing them to go through military checkpoints and searches while Israelis walk free. Not to mention, these funds have purchased the hell-fire missiles that have been used to conduct airstrikes on densely populated civilian areas in the Gaza Strip and have even targeted children playing outside with guided missiles (albeit reportedly accidental). These bombings killed more than ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED CIVILIANS in the Gaza Strip in 2014 ALONE, including almost five hundred children, while less than 100 Israelis died that same year (almost all of them IDF soldiers), yet no one calls this terrorism, and Israel has not been penalized for committing war crimes on a people who were literally trapped in Gaza, prevented by Israel from leaving the city. Also, the US has consistently blocked UN attempts to halt the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and the military (backed by the US) continues to bulldoze homes outside of Israel proper and replace them with zionist settlements. Almost all other countries are opposed to these settlements, which are an illegal confiscation of land under international law.
Not to mention, the US hasn't even allowed Palestine to have a vote in the UN; thus, it is completely hypocritical to claim that the Palestinians refuse to negotiate. Quite the contrary, Palestinians are literally not allowed a seat at the negotiating table. And even if they were, the way in which Israel is going about "negotiating" is completely unfair. How can one expect the PA to react sympathetically and engage in negotiations directly after Israel moves its capital to Jerusalem, a city that was illegally annexed by Israel through a counter-offensive in the Six Day War and which the Palestinians also desired to be the capital of a potential Palestinian state? These are no conditions under which to negotiate, and painting the Palestinians as the obstacle to a peace deal is disgraceful. Overall, I think it is important for people to educate themselves on the Palestine-Israel story through sources other than Fox News, and as long as the American people remain brainwashed by mainstream US media, a country that has an obvious political interest in the conflict, we are going to remain completely ignorant of the truths behind this issue. I personally am against a two state solution, as the West Bank is now far too fragmented by illegal jewish settlements to coagulate into a functional state. Rather, I think that Israel should eliminate its religious criteria for citizenship and that the Palestinians and Israelis should live in one secular Israeli state with equal citizen status. I personally see the existence of a religious state (which has more of an authoritarian than democratic structure) to be unacceptable considering that people had already been living there for hundreds of years before the massive influx of Jewish refugees during WWII. Essentially, one disenfranchised people have come in and disenfranchised another group of people, and a lot of violence could be resolved if this Israel did not determine the human status of its inhabitants based on their race and their religion.
Its about time that people start looking at Palestinians as people rather than terrorists. I doubt that will change in the near future, but it is still really saddening nonetheless.
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