JerusalemIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for the closure of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, days after US President Donald Trump threatened to cut Palestinian aid.
Israel has long viewed the UN agency, known as UNRWA, as biased against it, an allegation the agency strongly denies, saying it is only providing necessary services to Palestinians.
Israeli officials also criticise the agencys method of classifying refugees, with descendants also eligible to register.
UNRWA is an organisation that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem, Netanyahu said while also lauding Trump at the beginning of his weekly cabinet meeting.
He said that while millions of other refugees around the world were cared for by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Palestinians have their own body which also treats great-grandchildren of refugees who arent refugees. This absurd situation must be ended, Netanyahu said. UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said that its mandate came from the UN General Assembly whose members give wide and strong support to the agencys humanitarian and human development mission.
What perpetuates the refugee crisis is the failure of the parties to deal with the issue, he wrote in a statement.
This needs to be resolved by the parties to the conflict in the context of peace talks, based on UN resolutions and international law. In June, Netanyahu said he had raised the issue with Washingtons UN envoy Nikki Haley. On Wednesday, Trump threatened to cut aid worth more than $300 million annually to the Palestinians in a bid to force them to negotiate.
The United States has long provided the Palestinian Authority with much-needed budgetary support and security assistance, as well as an additional $304 million for UN programmes in the West Bank and Gaza.
A Friday report on Israeli Channel 10 television said the US had frozen a payment due to UNRWA, but a spokesman for the UN organisation said on Saturday that they have not been informed directly of a formal decision either way by the US administration.
UNRWA runs hundreds of schools for Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank, Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
It also distributes aid and provides teacher training centres, health clinics and social services.
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