The U.S. Is Sidelining Itself in the Middle East
The Trump administration’s reported plan to redefine who it considers a Palestinian refugee may further decrease its influence in the peace process.
The Trump administration is reportedly ending all funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and calling for a dramatic change in how Palestinian refugees are counted, effectively reducing the number of Palestinians the United States considers refugees from around 5 million to fewer than 500,000, The Washington Post reported.
What this effectively does is end for most Palestinians the UN-backed “right of return” to land they or their ancestors fled in 1948, when the state of Israel was created, and 1967, when Israel defeated a combined Arab military force in the Six-Day War. (Neither Israel nor the U.S. recognizes the
