It's a good start.
A few years ago, I made a case for defunding the UNRWA, a UN welfare organization dedicated to the Islamic colonial terror population in and around Israel which often collaborates with terrorists.
The UNRWA’s Gaza staff has its own union. In the 2012 election, a pro-Hamas bloc won the support of most of the union with 25 out of 27 seats on a union board.
When there was talk of reforming the UNRWA by removing Hamas members from its ranks, the editor of a Hamas paper wrote that, "Laying off the agency employees because of their political affiliation means laying off all the employees of the aid agency, because…they are all members of the ‘resistance,’ in its various forms."
The official word from Hamas was that it and the UNRWA are the same thing. The UNRWA’s vast majority of locally sourced Gazans are part of Hamas.
The UNRWA does not see that as a problem.
"I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll," a former UNRWA Commissioner General said, "and I don’t see that as a crime."
Sol Stern, more recently, offered a compelling case for Trump to take action.
As president, Trump can do a big favor for the Palestinians by disabusing them of their fantasy of return. He should begin by immediately cutting off all American funding of UNRWA. (This will be quite easy to do, because UNRWA isn’t financed out of the U.N. budget, but rather through voluntary contributions from many member states.) Instead, the president can announce that the $400 million that usually goes directly to UNRWA will be set aside for a fund available for permanent resettlement of the Palestinian residents of the refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza.
Now there's a positive first step.
The United States has frozen $125 million in funding for a UN agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees, Axios news site reported on Friday, citing three unidentified Western diplomats.
The diplomats said funding, a third of the annual US donation to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, was supposed to be delivered by Jan. 1 but was frozen until the administration of US President Donald Trump finishes its review of US aid to the Palestinian Authority, Axios reported.
Freezes often don't stay frozen. And this is more likely a signal to Abbas about the importance of agreeing to negotiations. But it's still an important signpost. And it may lead to an end to UNRWA funding.