WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will cut funding to all its projects in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on January 31, Dave Harden, former USAID mission director and managing director of the Georgetown Strategy Group, says.
Harden lamented the White House's decision, adding that the administration "demonstrates again a lack of nuance, sophistication and appreciation for the complexity of the situation," according to the Jerusalem Post.
"Who suffers when USAID leaves schools and water systems unfinished? Palestinians, of course, but also Israelis and Americans. The administration just gave Hamas more running room," Harden said.
He later tweeted that the decision to close the office is "another example of the end of the two-state solution" to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The decision to cut U.S. foreign aid to Palestinians was announced by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration in August 2018.
"At the direction of President Trump, we have undertaken a review of U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority and in the West Bank and Gaza to ensure these funds are spent in accordance with U.S. national interests and provide value to the U.S. taxpayer," the State Department said at the time. "As a result of that review, at the direction of the president, we will redirect more than $200 million… originally planned for programs in the West Bank and Gaza."
The United Nations aid coordination body says the Tel Aviv regime and Israeli groups have been trying over the past years to delegitimize humanitarian organizations working in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The push has been "advanced by a network of Israeli civil society groups and some associated organizations elsewhere, with the apparent support” of the regime itself, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report.
It said the overall bid had a negative impact on the ability of humanitarian organizations to deliver assistance and advocate on behalf of Palestinian rights.
The bid, the UN body said, had featured "targeted defamation and smear campaigns alleging violations of counter-terrorism legislation and international law, or political action against Israel.”
The report, however, stressed that most of these allegations "are baseless or misrepresent and distort critical, factual or legal elements.”
The campaign also included "impediments by Israeli banks to the transferring of funds and procedures to close down accounts; refusal of Israeli venues to host events involving certain NGOs; and the potential undermining of information disseminated by organizations whose reputation has been damaged.”
The Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), which represents the majority of international NGOs and non-profit organizations in the occupied territories, conducted a survey among its members between October and November 2018 to assess the impact of the campaign. Forty-three percent of AIDA’s members said the campaign had undermined their funding.
The campaign comes as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living inside more than a dozen refugee camps across the Israeli-occupied West Bank are in dire need of daily assistance by such organizations.
The pressure facing the Palestinians compounded in August 2018, when the United States, Israel’s biggest ally, said it was ending all funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).