(MENAFN- Jordan News Agency) Gaza City, Jan 8 (Petra) –– A top Palestinian official said on Monday that a US threat to halt aid to the United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees is "unjustified" and aims to "liquidate" the refugees' issue.
"The US step is unjustified and unwarranted and is only interpreted as being part of attempts by Israel and some circles in the US Congress to end UNRWA's (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees) work", said Zakariya Al Agha, Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee member and Director of the Department for Refugee Affairs.
He said UNRWA was established in the first place to care and employ Palestinian refugees until their issue is solved once and for all in a final a settlement, adding that the refugees have had enough of the historic injustice that befell them over seventy years as they awaited the fulfillment of the right to return.
Such a right, Agha pointed out, had been in limbo due to the Israeli rejection and its challenge of international legitimacy resolutions and US support of Israel in the international organisations.
He said UNRWA's donor nations' aid is an obligation endorsed by the United Nations in its resolution 302, and that donations are supposed to continue, warning that if the US carried through with its decision, it would amount to an attempt to liquidate the refugees' issue and bypass it.
The PLO official noted that the US threat to suspend aid to UNRWA followed President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and turn a blind eye to stepped up settlement construction and measures to legitimize Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories as an inseparable part of Israel.
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8/1/2018 - 04:40:31 PM
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