UNITED NATIONS: US envoy to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Tuesday slammed Arab and Islamic states for talking a lot about supporting the Palestinians but not giving more money to help, calling out countries like Egypt, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
Haley listed how much those countries, along with Algeria, Tunisia, Pakistan, Oman and Turkey, had given – or not given – to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which helps Palestinian refugees. Washington, long the biggest donor, cut its aid to $60 million from a promised $365 million this year.
“No group of countries is more generous with their words than the Palestinians’ Arab neighbors, and other OIC member states,” Haley told a UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East, citing the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
“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 said.
She also called out China and Russia for talking “a big game about the Palestinian cause” but providing only $350,000 and $2 million respectively to UNRWA in 2017.
“It is time for the regional states in particular to step up and really help the Palestinian people, instead of just making speeches thousands of miles away,” said Haley.
US President Donald Trump withheld UNRWA aid after questioning its value and saying the Palestinians needed to agree to renew peace talks with Israel, while the State Department said UNRWA needed to make unspecified reforms.
Seven former US ambassadors to the United Nations under both Republican and Democratic presidents urged US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier this month to restore US funding to UNRWA.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser, said late last month that Washington would announce its Middle East peace plan soon.
“It is now gone about a year since we discussed this here and we were informed about plans and we haven’t seen it yet. I think there is a problem that there’s no credible plan on the table,” Sweden’s UN Ambassador Olof Skoog, president of the Security Council for July, told reporters.
There are gaping divisions between Washington and the Palestinian leadership that have widened since Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December and moved the US Embassy there, overriding decades of US policy.
Haley said that if the Arab countries “really cared” they would tell Palestinian leaders “how foolish they look for condemning a peace proposal they haven’t even seen yet.”