Trump’s Latest Move to Shatter the Status Quo could Lead to Disaster in the Middle East

posted on: Sep 7, 2018

SOURCE: WASHINGTON POST

WHEN PRESIDENT Trump moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in May, some speculated the controversial step could serve to jolt Middle East diplomacy out of a deep rut and open the way for the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative the White House has been promising. That’s not what happened: Instead, an angry Palestinian leadership turned its back on the United States, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pocketed the historic concession without offering anything in return.

Now Mr. Trump has adopted a second status-quo-shattering measure, cutting off U.S. support for the United Nations agency that provides economic, educational and health-care services to millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jordan and Syria. Again, this a major concession to Mr. Netanyahu, and again, the administration seems to hope it will force serious negotiations. Not only is this unlikely, but also the cutoff risks worsening an already terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza, with unpredictable consequences.

For decades the United States has been the largest funder of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which was created in 1949 to serve the some 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven out of Israel after its creation. The agency is often blamed for helping to turn Palestinian refugees into a perpetual and ever-expanding constituency; it now has 5.3 million clients, including children and grandchildren of the original refugees. But Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states are chiefly responsible for that legacy, because they have failed to reach an agreement to settle the refugee question.

Mr. Trump and advisers such as Jared Kushner appear to believe they can deflate the Palestinian demand for a “return” by the refugees to Israel by defunding UNRWA, just as they thought moving the embassy to Jerusalem would help settle the long-disputed question of the city’s final status. More pragmatically, the White House asserted that the United States, which last year supplied $360 million of UNRWA’s slightly more than $1 billion budget, was unfairly saddled with a burden that should be more equally shared. UNRWA’s directors have responded by raising more money from European and Arab states, but say they are still some $200 million short for this year.

That shortfall could have acute humanitarian effects, particularly in Gaza, where UNRWA supplies food to 1 million people, operates a school system, provides basic health care and employs 13,000 people. The territory is already suffering from severe shortages of power, water and sewage capacity, and the Hamas movement that controls it has been on the brink of a new war with Israel. It’s no wonder that Israel’s security establishment has viewed the prospect of an UNRWA collapse with alarm.

If the administration wished to constructively end support for UNRWA, it should have done so gradually, while simultaneously shifting U.S. aid to other channels so that Palestinian schools and health clinics would not disappear. Instead, it has acted in a way that will serve only to further diminish U.S. influence in the Middle East — if it does not precipitate a disaster.