The United Nations and the Palestinian Authority appealed on Monday for $350 million in aid for Palestinians next year, saying much more is needed but they must be realistic after a year of funding cuts.
The 2019 Humanitarian Response Plan focuses on Palestinians most in need of food, health care, shelter, water and sanitation, said Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Donations were down in many areas around the world, he said. But local aid work took a particularly hard hit this year when the United States ended funding for UNRWA, the U.N. agency that helps 5 million Palestinian refugees.
"Humanitarian actors are faced with record low funding levels of this year, [and] at the same time we face massive and increasing needs," McGoldrick said in Ramallah.
"We will be able to assist fewer people this year – 1.4 million people are being targeted [for assistance] as opposed to 1.9 million last year."
He said agencies faced many difficulties, including the politicization of aid by "political forces, which are using aid or tampering with aid," and attacks on their work by those who intend on "delegitimizing some of the work of the humanitarian actors."
The organizers said more than three-quarters of the funds sought would go to Gaza because the densely populated coastal strip is in a "dire humanitarian situation" after years of the Israeli-led blockade, Palestinian political divisions and casualties from demonstrations and hostilities.
In August, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert announced that Washington would cut all funding to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
Nauert said UNRWA's business model and fiscal practices were an "irredeemably flawed operation" and that the agency's "endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries is simply unsustainable."
The move was widely seen as a means of pressuring the Palestinian Authority to enter peace negotiations with Israel.
Palestinian Social Development Minister Ibrahim Al-Shaer said on Monday the Palestinians would not give in to pressure.
"The position of the Palestinian people, its leadership and its government is that we will not drop our legitimate rights for aid and money," he said.
McGoldrick said the cuts to UNRWA had caused a "massive impact" to the agency itself, but also led to shortages elsewhere.
"Some donors have probably filled the gaps left by the U.S., and that has maybe turned them away from other funding possibilities for us in the humanitarian world," he said.
