The State Department issued a press release on February 4:
The $40 million contribution will provide critical health, education, and humanitarian services to 4.7 million Palestinian refugees across the region. Of this contribution, $30 million will support UNRWA’s core services in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. An additional $10 million will support UNRWA’s emergency appeal for the West Bank and Gaza, including emergency food assistance, and job creation programs.
The United States is UNRWA’s largest bilateral donor. In 2009, the United States provided over $267 million to UNRWA, including $116.2 million to its General Fund, $119.5 million to its West Bank/Gaza emergency programs, $30 million to emergency programs in Lebanon, and $2.2 million to assist other Palestinians in the region.
That was the State Department’s press release in its entirety. No American media have report this news, though several foreign papers have. The Israel National News site Arutz Sheva reports this relevant point:
The American funding comes despite a report commissioned by the European parliament, which showed that Hamas terrorists have been chosen by the agency’s labor union to oversee its Gaza facilities, which was part of a Canadian decision last month to stop its UNRWA funding.
We posted on the Canadian decision here. And here’s a post from last May on a Joel Mowbray piece on how the U.S. taxpayers are enriching Palestinian terrorists by our funding of UNRWA. (UNRWA is the UN agency responsible only for Palestinian refugees, while UNHCR is responsible for all other refugees. UNHCR’s policy is to resettle refugees back in their home countries or in other countries, while UNRWA’s policy is to keep the Palestinians as refugees forever, or until they can destroy Israel.)