Israeli Foreign Ministry urges diplomats to cut UNRWA funding

"Israel on Tuesday urged the international community to rethink its donations to UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, saying it should be shut down.

'Israel's policy is to close UNRWA. They are the problem, not the solution,' Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said at a briefing with 50 foreign ambassadors and diplomats on Israel's policy on the matter.

Hotovely spoke of the shift in U.S. policy on UNRWA over the past year, with Washington ending its funding to the agency and demanding that it undergo a 'fundamental re-examination,' and underscored how other refugee crises have been handled in the past.

'Over the years, we have seen how instead of settling the original refugees, UNRWA has acted to increase the number of refugees, as it did when it automatically transferred refugee status from generation to generation,' Hotovely said.

'There is no parallel for this in the world, and it only perpetuates the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict. After 70 years, why are there still Palestinian refugees, when it is clear to all that fewer than 100,000 Palestinians from the time of the [1948] War of Independence are still alive?'..."