Kushner Reportedly Worked to Strip Jordan’s Two Million Palestinians of Refugee Status
Kushner raised the issue with Jordanian officials during a visit to Amman, Foreign Policy reports ■ Move appears to be part of broader effort to halt UNRWA, which Kushner allegedly called ‘corrupt and inefficient’
Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, has reportedly pressured Jordan to strip the refugee status of more than two million registered Palestinians living in the country.
According to a report in the U.S. magazine Foreign Policy, Kushner raised the issue with Jordanian officials in the region during his visit there in June.
Hasan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee, claimed that the senior aide’s move was part of a broader effort by him and the U.S. administration to render UNRWA, the UN aid agency providing relief to Palestinian, irrelevant and halt its work in Jordan and in other countries in the Middle East.
“[Kushner said] the resettlement has to take place in the host countries and these governments can do the job that UNRWA was doing,” Ashrawi said.
The Palestinians’ chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, told reporters after Kushner’s visit to Jordan in June that the latter’s delegation said it was ready to stop UNRWA funding and redirect the sum allocated to the agency to Jordan and other countries that host refugees.
Emails written by Kushner and obtained by Foreign Policy point to Kushner’s evident dismay with the UN agency as well as to discreet attempts to put a stop to UNRWA’s work — a move that would essentially render millions of Palestinian refugees status-less.
“It is important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA,” the senior aide reportedly wrote Trump’s Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt in an email dating back to January 11, 2018. “This [agency] perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help peace,” Kushner said of UNRWA.
Other such expressions were reportedly repeated in different exchanges the president’s son-in-law had with other U.S. officials.