Email correspondence from Kushner leaked in which he calls to “strategically risk breaking things”; Trump Administration organizing team for Middle East peace plan; PA: Kushner attempting to eliminate the Palestinian problem and negate all of the Palestinian nation’s legitimate rights.
The United States is working to dismantle the UNRWA and recently requested that Jordan strip 2 million Palestinians of refugee status.
Email correspondence between President Trump’s special envoys to the Middle East, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, were released by Foreign Policy over the weekend in their exclusive report “Trump and Allies Seek End to Refugee Status for Millions of Palestinians”. The emails, written by Kushner, state that while it is “important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA. This [agency] perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help peace. Our goal can’t be to keep things stable and as they are. Sometimes you have to strategically risk breaking things in order to get there.”
Reportedly during a meeting between Kushner, Greenblatt and Kind Abdullah II in June of this year, the United States requested that Jordan strip 2 million Palestinians of their refugee status as part of efforts to remove the Palestinian’s claim to right of return. The UNRWA claims to provide “assistance and protection to Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” since 1949, assisting approximately 5 million Palestinian “refugees”.
The Palestinian Authority responded to these reports on Sunday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas claiming that Kushner is trying to “eliminate the Palestinian problem and negate all of the Palestinian nation’s legitimate rights”.
In January, the Trump Administration announced it would cut $65 million in funding for the agency. Shortly following, Prime Minister Netanyahu followed the United States. He stated on the agency the “UNRWA is an organization that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem. It also perpetuates the narrative of the right-of-return, as it were, in order to eliminate the State of Israel; therefore, UNRWA needs to pass from the world.”
On the corruption and lies of the agency, Netanyahu stated “This is an agency that was established 70 years ago, only for Palestinian refugees, at a time when the UNHCR [United Nations Human Rights Council] deals with global refugee problems. Of course this creates a situation in which there are great-grandchildren of refugees, who are not refugees but who are cared for by UNRWA, and another 70 years will pass and those great-grandchildren will have great-grandchildren and therefore, this absurdity needs to stop.”
Nikki Haley recently criticized Arab states for their generosity in words, but not in funding for Palestinians. Criticizing the UN at the most recent Security Council meeting, Haley again defended both Israel and the USA, citing the ongoing anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian agenda. She pointed out that “No group of countries is more generous with their words than the Palestinians’ Arab neighbors, and other OIC [Organization of Islamic Cooperation] member states. But all of the words spoken here in New York do not feed, clothe, or educate a single Palestinian child. All they do is get the international community riled up.”
She added “How much have the Arab countries-some of whom are wealthy countries- how much have they given to the Palestinians? It does not come anywhere close to what the United States has done… Americans are very generous people. We are humanitarian oriented people. And we continue to seek out ways to help the Palestinian people, whose plight is of genuine concern to us. But we are not fools. If we extend a hand in friendship and generosity, we do not expect our hand to be bitten.”
Meanwhile, reports recently surfaced that the White House and National Security Council are organizing a team to implement the Trump Administration’s Middle East peace plan. The Administration continues to keep all aspects of the plan top secret while it continues negotiations in Israel and with Arab states.
Amir will give a special update on these developments, the developing crisis in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf with the unusual Iranian military drill, the start of the new American sanctions next week and much more. Tune in on Sunday, August 5, 2018 at 8:00 pm (Israel time).
Photo: Michael Candelori/Shutterstock.com
