Association 302 for Defense of Refugees Rights warned of the malevolent implications of the latest contribution by the U.S. administration to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

The United States pledged on Thursday to shell out $99 to refresh UNRWA budget, in light of the unprecedented financial crunch.

In a tweet, the State Department’s Population, Refugee and Migration Bureau said: “The U.S. is proud to announce $99M for UNRWA to provide education, health care, and emergency relief to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children and families during a time of need.”

Last year, the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) issued a report unraveling the historical and legal discrepancies of the “2021-2022 Framework for Cooperation with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)” signed by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration on July 14.

Entitled “US-UNRWA Framework for Cooperation on Palestinian Refugees: Another Prelude to Dismantle the Agency”, PRC’s report provided a close reading of the Framework and showed how it unravels its biased and dangerous implications on the Palestinian refugee cause.

The framework signals a reawakening of the US pro-Israel policy which seeks to liquidate the Palestinian refugee cause, deny Palestinians’ refugee status, and relocate them outside their homeland. The document includes signs of prejudice and partiality that strike at the foundations of the Palestinian refugee status.

The real danger of the document is that it seeks to normalize a de-historicized definition of the Palestinian refugee status that might be adopted by other international organizations seeking to gradually undermine the historical and moral idiosyncrasies of the definition.

PRC has also warned that the US-drafted framework seeks to depoliticize the Palestinian refugee cause as no single reference is made to the right of return or the historical context of the issue. The document rather lays utmost emphasis on the US conditions to resume funding to the UNRWA, which gives the impression of guardianship or tutelage at a time when UNRWA struggles to keep its programmes running and delivering much needed assistance to vulnerable and marginalized Palestinian refugee communities.