U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley has blasted Arab and Muslim states for their rhetoric on the Palestinian situation and for not taking more concrete action to alleviate humanitarian suffering and supporting the peace process.
Haley told the U.N. Security Council Tuesday that “talk is cheap, calling out many countries, including U.S. allies Kuwait, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, for their lack of or small contributions to the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA.
"So the next time we have a meeting like this in the Security Council or the General Assembly and we hear speech after speech about the plight of the Palestinian people I would ask those who are making the speeches to examine what your country is doing to help other than speech making."
Last year,the United States gave $364 million to help Palestinians, but Haley failed to add that in January the Trump administration slashed its 2018 funding by $300 million, leaving UNRWA in an uNPRecedented financial crisis.
Since then, the agency has held two emergency pledging conferences and raised $238 million, but still faces a $217 million shortfall and has warned that it may have to delay the start of the September school year. UNRWA schools educate more than half-a-million children in the Palestinian territories and across the region.