The Guardian: ‘We need more food, not less’: U.S. cuts leave Palestinian refugees in crisis
“…Until last year, the U.S. donated roughly one-third of [the U.N. Relief and Works Agency’s (UNRWA)] $1.1bn (£861m) budget — easily the biggest contribution — to cover schooling, health care, and food aid for 5.3 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. But the U.S. has decided to end funding, in what Matthias Schmale, UNRWA’s Gaza director, called an unprecedented politicization of aid which risks a ‘Yemen-style crisis.’ Emergency donations made by Britain and other countries to make up the shortfall left by the U.S. decision means schools and health clinics will stay open until next summer. But there are no guarantees that food aid, on which 77 percent of Gaza’s 1.3m registered refugees below the international poverty line depend, can be sustained beyond January, says Schmale…” (Macintyre, 12/7).