Riyad Mansour, the Palestinians’ UN envoy, said US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley was “becoming more Israeli than the Israelis themselves.”
By: AP and World Israel News Staff
The Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to the UN said on Wednesday that the Trump administration was pro-Israel and that US Ambassador Nikki Haley “is becoming more Israeli than the Israelis themselves.”
Mansour cited Haley’s accusations against Arab and Islamic countries, saying this was “for the sake of promoting an unconditional defense of Israel” but “not in the interest of the United States, much more in the interest of Israel.”
He was referring to Haley’s speech to the UN Security Council Tuesday in which she accused Arab and Islamic nations of being generous with their words in support of the Palestinians but not with their wallets.
He also mentioned a failed US and Israeli effort Tuesday to amend a resolution on “the social and economic consequences of the Israeli occupation” to call for Hamas, which rules Gaza, to release two Israeli civilians and the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.
Mansour cited the Americans’ drastic cuts in funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA. This year, the US cut some $300 million to UNRWA, leaving the agency in dire financial straits, and is now reviewing some $200 million in assistance for the Palestinians.
“UNRWA is an organization that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem. It also perpetuates the narrative of the right-of-return, as it were, in order to eliminate the state of Israel; therefore, UNRWA needs to pass from the world,” Netanyahu stated in January, after the US froze a $125 million grant to the agency.
“This is an agency that was established 70 years ago, only for Palestinian refugees, at a time when the UNHCR (the UN refugee agency) deals with global refugee problems. Of course this creates a situation in which there are great-grandchildren of refugees, who are not refugees but who are cared for by UNRWA, and another 70 years will pass and those great-grandchildren will have great-grandchildren and therefore, this absurdity needs to stop,” the Israeli leader said.
In a tweet at the time, US President Donald Trump expressed frustration over the lack of progress in his attempts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and he pointed the finger at the Palestinians. “We pay the Palestinians HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect,” he said. “But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”
Trump peace plan ‘dead upon arrival’
The Trump administration’s long-awaited plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace is “dead upon arrival,” Mansour said on Tuesday.
Riyad Mansour told reporters that after Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Dec. 6, the US “lost the qualification to be the only party to supervise the political process.”