Their hearts may be empty but their stomachs shall be filled. Their hopes may be dead but their bank accounts will be in the black
By Robert Fisk: Hindsight is unfair – but it might tell the truth. First, Donald Trump proclaims Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, thus depriving the Palestinians of their capital in the east of the city. The Palestinians are appalled. Mahmoud Abbas says he will no longer talk to the United States. So Trump rages that “we pay the Palestinians hundreds of millions of dollars a year and get no appreciation or respect.” It was only a tweet, but he means it. Those ungrateful Palestinian wretches! And he cuts $300m from America’s aid to the refugees, giving the oppressed and besieged and dispossessed Palestinians a mere $60m.
Already the United Nations Relief and Works Agency – recipients of international aid for 5.3 million Palestinian refugees – is having to get rid of its employees, 113 of them in Gaza alone last week. Unrwa has been caring for the Palestinians since 1949, and already has a current deficit of $49m. Its 30,000 Palestinian doctors, nurses, teachers and other staff face unemployment. Starvation thus threatens even more of the tired, poor and huddled masses of Gaza.