U.N. Funds Palestinian Campaign

August 17, 2005
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165893,00.html http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165893,00.html 
GAZA — The Gaza Strip is one of the poorest, most overpopulated areas in the world with 1.4 million Palestinians crammed into a 100-square-mile area. With 50 percent unemployment, the vast majority of Gazans live below a poverty line of $2 a day.
It's exactly the kind of situation that the United Nations Development Program was set up to deal with, and the U.N. is spending millions of dollars there every year.
But FOX News has discovered that not all that cash is going to alleviate poverty. Instead, some of it is funding a Palestinian political campaign under the slogan, Today Gaza, tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Both the West Bank and Jerusalem are disputed areas, yet it is U.N. money that is paying for posters, t-shirts, even bumper stickers bearing that slogan. On Tuesday, as Israeli security forces clashed with angry Jewish settlers protesting their eviction from the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia wore a T-shirt saying, Today Gaza. Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem.
When FOX News confronted the UNDP representative in Gaza about the apparent misuse of U.N. money, he brushed off the concern.
Almost anything new in Palestine has an element of politics in it, said the representative, Timothy Rothermel. This was something, that particular poster which was prepared by the disengagement office with financial support from UNDP, but obviously what it says is also consistent with the relevant U.N. resolutions in the Security Council decisions about the status of Palestine.
But others are livid.
This is simply outrageous, said Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. The West Bank is disputed territory under the U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. The United Nations has no business getting involved in sloganeering to call the Palestinians to also take tomorrow the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Gold claims the UNDP has also been giving money to organizations tied to Hamas. One UNDP bank transfer request, obtained by FOX News, shows the organization giving thousands of dollars to a Jenin-based organization with links to the militant group.
When the evidence obtained by FOX News was shown to UNDP headquarters in New York, officials said the funding was given without their knowledge and they said they were surprised, but there has been no word if the funding will stop or if disciplinary action will be taken.