"Slowly but surely President Trump is slaying the sacred cows of Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy.
Last week the State Department announced a $200 million cut in annual aid to the Palestinian Authority. Before that, America cut support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a body created in 1949 to tend to some 750,000 Arab refugees from the war Israel's neighbors launched to erase it off the map.
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Next, Washington reportedly plans to announce a cap of 500,000 refugees UNRWA can handle. Further, they'll be counted as other refugees are counted instead of the expansive way only Palestinian 'refugees' are counted, which includes multi-generational descendants.
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Most absurdly, Palestinian UNRWA clients living in camps where the Palestinian Authority, or in Gaza where Hamas, has full control, remain 'refugees' despite Palestinian rule, hoping they'll relocate to Tel Aviv or Haifa one day.
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True, regardless of the $200 million aid cut, America will continue funding Palestinian security bodies. The other cut, to UNRWA, has little to do with security directly. Yet, funds are fungible and the Palestinian Authority's president, Mahmoud Abbas, may well retaliate by diverting funds from security to welfare.
And so, 'the ramifications of [Trump's] abrupt steps will only empower the radicals,' warns a former Israeli army spokesman, Peter Lerner, in Haaretz.
Einat Wilf, the Israeli coauthor of 'The War for Return,' a book critical of the demand for a 'right' to return, disagrees. A vocal advocate of peace negotiations with the Palestinians, she nevertheless strongly calls for dismantling UNRWA.
'UNRWA encourages radicalism,' she says. 'It keeps alive the dream that the pre-1948 status quo will return and that Israel as a Jewish state will be erased from the map. I'm not against aid to Palestinians, just against encouraging that dream.'..."