Australia ends direct aid to Palestinian Authority
July 2, 2018
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said there was concern the PA was financing activities Australia "would never support." Australia will instead send its aid to the UN Humanitarian Fund for the Palestinian Territories.
Image: picture-alliance/H. Salem
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Australia on Monday announced it had ended direct aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) government over concerns the funds could be used to assist Palestinians convicted of political violence.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Australia would no longer be giving its yearly funding of A$10 million (€6.9 million, $7.5 million) to the World Bank's trust fund for Palestinian recovery and development.
"I wrote to the Palestinian Authority on May 29, to seek clear assurance that Australian funding is not being used to assist Palestinians convicted of politically motivated violence," Bishop said in a statement.
"I am confident that previous Australian funding to the PA through the World Bank has been used as intended," Bishop said. "However, I am concerned that in providing funds for this aspect of the PA's operations there is an opportunity for it to use its own budget to fund activities that Australia would never support," she continued.
Prospect of peace undermined
"Any assistance provided by the Palestine Liberation Organization to those convicted of politically motivated violence is an affront to Australian values, and undermines the prospect of meaningful peace between Israel and the Palestinians," Bishop said.
The money will instead go to the United Nations' Humanitarian Fund for the Palestinian Territories, which provides vulnerable Palestinians with access to health care, food, water, improved sanitation and shelter.
Jerusalem is one of the oldest and most contested cities in the world. Jerusalem is revered as a sacred city by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. For this reason, there has been controversy over the city to this day.
Image: picture-alliance/Zumapress/S. Qaq
Jerusalem, the city of David
According to the Old Testament, David, king of the two partial kingdoms of Judah and Israel, won Jerusalem from the Jebusites around 1000 BC. He moved his seat of government to Jerusalem, making it the capital and religious center of his kingdom. The Bible says David's son Solomon built the first temple for Yahweh, the God of Israel. Jerusalem became the center of Judaism.
Image: Imago/Leemage
Under Persian rule
The Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II (3rd from the left) conquered Jerusalem in 597 and again in 586 BC, as the Bible says. He took King Jehoiakim (5th from the right) and the Jewish upper class into captivity, sent them to Babylon and destroyed the temple. After Persian king Cyrus the Great seized Babylon, he allowed the exiled Jews to return home to Jerusalem and to rebuild their temple.
The Roman Empire ruled Jerusalem from the year 63 AD. Resistance movements rapidly formed among the population, so that in 66 AD, the First Jewish–Roman War broke out. The war ended 4 years later, with a Roman victory and another destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. The Romans and Byzantines ruled Palestine for approximately 600 years.
Image: Historical Picture Archive/COR
Conquest by the Arabs
Over the course of the Islamic conquest of Greater Syria, Muslim armies also reached Palestine. By order of the Caliph Umar (in the picture), Jerusalem was besieged and captured in the year 637 AD. In the following era of Muslim rule, various, mutually hostile and religiously divided rulers presided over the city. Jerusalem was often besieged and changed hands several times.
Image: Selva/Leemage
The Crusades
From 1070 AD onward, the Muslim Seljuk rulers increasingly threatened the Christian world. Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade, which took Jerusalem in 1099 AD. Over a period of 200 years a total of nine crusades set out to conquer the city as it changed hands between Muslim and Christian rule. In 1244 AD the crusaders finally lost control of the city and it once again became Muslim.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
The Ottomans and the British
After the conquest of Egypt and Arabia by the Ottomans, Jerusalem became the seat of an Ottoman administrative district in 1535 AD. In its first decades of Ottoman rule, the city saw a clear revival. With a British victory over Ottoman troops in 1917 AD, Palestine fell under British rule. Jerusalem went to the British without a fight.
Image: Gemeinfrei
The divided city
After World War II, the British gave up their Palestinian Mandate. The UN voted for a division of the country in order to create a home for the survivors of the Holocaust. Some Arab states then went to war against Israel and conquered part of Jerusalem. Until 1967, the city was divided into an Israeli west and a Jordanian east.
Image: Gemeinfrei
East Jerusalem goes back to Israel
In 1967, Israel waged the Six-Day War against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Israel took control of the Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. Israeli paratroopers gained access to the Old City and stood at the Wailing Wall for the first time since 1949. East Jerusalem is not officially annexed, but rather integrated into the administration.
Israel has not denied Muslims access to its holy places. The Temple Mount is under an autonomous Muslim administration; Muslims can enter, visit the Dome of the Rock and the adjacent Al-Aqsa mosque and pray there.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/A. Gharabli
Unresolved status
Jerusalem remains to this day an obstacle to peace between Israel and Palestine. In 1980, Israel declared the whole city its "eternal and indivisible capital." After Jordan gave up its claim to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1988, the state of Palestine was proclaimed. Palestine also declares, in theory, Jerusalem as its capital.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/R. Jensen
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US mulling aid cut
Australia's move comes as the United States also considers ending funding to the PA over hundreds of millions of dollars in payments made to Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
Some of the prisoners convicted of political violence are serving jail time for killing Israeli soldiers and civilians, which has led Israel to condemn the PA for funding terrorists.
In March, the US government passed a law that halted the delivery of some financial aid to the Palestinians due to stipends being paid to families of Palestinians killed or jailed in clashes with Israel, a move praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Palestine has defended the payments, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas saying Palestine had "a social responsibility to look after innocent people affected by the incarceration or killing of their loved ones."