U.S. to Deny Palestinian Refugees Right of Return

Date: 26 August 2018 - 21:20

News ID: ۵۶۶۸۵

WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Washington is set to announce that it will no longer recognize millions of Palestinian refugees' "right of return" to the occupied territories, the Zionist regime’s media reports.
According to Israel's Hadashot News, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump will make the announcement over the next few days, in which it will claim that only around one million Palestinians are eligible for refugee status.
The claim will contradict UN statistics which classify over five million Palestinians as refugees.
Earlier this month, the American magazine Foreign Policy obtained emails written by Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, to senior U.S. officials in which he pressured Jordan to remove the refugee status of millions of Palestinians in a bid to disrupt UNRWA's work.
Washington has on multiple occasions voiced opposition over treating the descendants of Palestinian refugees as refugees themselves.
In January, the U.S. government announced that it would withhold $65 million of a $125 million aid installment to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
On Friday, the United States also canceled over $200 million in funds for the Palestinian Authority. UNRWA head suggested that the U.S. had slashed the agency's budget to punish the Palestinians for their criticism of Washington's recognition of al-Quds as the Zionist regime’s "capital."
"I can say with a great degree of confidence that the decision was not related to UNRWA’s performance because in November I had received very constructive and openly positive feedback on those issues,” Pierre Kraehenbuehl told the Associated Press.
"A few weeks later, tensions increased around the question of Jerusalem [al-Quds],” he added. "It appears that the humanitarian funding to UNRWA got caught up in the deep polarization around that question.”
U.S.-Palestine ties deteriorated last December, when Trump declared al-Quds as the "capital” of the occupying regime and announced plans to transfer the embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied city.

Washington is set to announce that it will no longer recognize millions of Palestinian refugees' "right of return" to the occupied territories.