Germany joined the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries in pausing funding to the UN's aid agency for Palestinians. DW has the latest.
You can’t change Israel’s behaviour by stopping funds, they’d just double down and bankroll stuff on their own.
You can at least make it harder. The idea of “They’ll do it anyway so might as well”, aside from being dubious at best, doesn’t help anyone.
You can get the UN to clean up the UNWRA by suspending funding.
They’re already doing that. 13 employees were caught and they were fired (the ones who aren’t dead anyway).
And all this isn’t new btw donor countries have been griping around e.g. PA textbooks for ages, UNWRA is teaching from those, say that they’re training their teachers to identify and be critical of sections glorifying martyrdom etc, but the record is spotty at best.
The double standard of expecting perfection from Palestinians while Israel is subjecting them to Apartheid and committing genocide won’t do anything to help end the conflict. Don’t want people glorifying terror? Stop funding the environment where terror seems like a legitimate means of resistance. Until that happens criticism of Palestinian textbooks is both missing the elephant in the room and very tone deaf.
Poland did one thing. On the other hand Israel has preferential economic deals with the EU and are having the US, UK and Germany defend their genocide on the international stage. Props to Poland, but a lot more needs to be done.
The EU is funding Palestine, much to the chagrin of the Israeli right-wing – but they can’t go full on “the EU is our enemy” mode because the EU does not blindly antagonise Israel. And then, in practice, boycotts products produced in settlements (they have to be labelled such, no “made in Israel”, and noone is buying settlement products).
It’s much easier to influence people when you have both a stick and a carrot. And when it comes to funding that can only ever be a carrot in Israel’s case as they have enough resources to do without, while in Palestine you can use it as both stick and carrot.
The situation over here is vastly more complex and most of all the policies much more deliberate than what you hear out of the US, “evangelicals believe that Israel is important for the rupture thus they ship weapons without regards to pretty much anything”.
Okay this actually makes a lot of sense. I still believe it’s tone-deaf to expect Palestinians to go all peace and love when Israel is like… that, but this explains why the EU isn’t as tough on Israel as it could be.
You can at least make it harder. The idea of “They’ll do it anyway so might as well”, aside from being dubious at best, doesn’t help anyone.
They’re already doing that. 13 employees were caught and they were fired (the ones who aren’t dead anyway).
The double standard of expecting perfection from Palestinians while Israel is subjecting them to Apartheid and committing genocide won’t do anything to help end the conflict. Don’t want people glorifying terror? Stop funding the environment where terror seems like a legitimate means of resistance. Until that happens criticism of Palestinian textbooks is both missing the elephant in the room and very tone deaf.
And Poland did so. Different actors require different approaches to influence is all I’m saying. Have you actually read the whole of my comment.
Poland did one thing. On the other hand Israel has preferential economic deals with the EU and are having the US, UK and Germany defend their genocide on the international stage. Props to Poland, but a lot more needs to be done.
The EU is funding Palestine, much to the chagrin of the Israeli right-wing – but they can’t go full on “the EU is our enemy” mode because the EU does not blindly antagonise Israel. And then, in practice, boycotts products produced in settlements (they have to be labelled such, no “made in Israel”, and noone is buying settlement products).
It’s much easier to influence people when you have both a stick and a carrot. And when it comes to funding that can only ever be a carrot in Israel’s case as they have enough resources to do without, while in Palestine you can use it as both stick and carrot.
The situation over here is vastly more complex and most of all the policies much more deliberate than what you hear out of the US, “evangelicals believe that Israel is important for the rupture thus they ship weapons without regards to pretty much anything”.
Okay this actually makes a lot of sense. I still believe it’s tone-deaf to expect Palestinians to go all peace and love when Israel is like… that, but this explains why the EU isn’t as tough on Israel as it could be.