USAID has halted basic, food aid, health services, and infrastructure projects thereby depriving tens of thousands of Palestinians of their basic necessities.
On Friday, the United States officially announced the suspension of all aid to Palestine through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has suspended all aid to Palestine, noting that they would not take steps to end its mission in full, a US official said.
Prime Minister Rami al-Hamdallah, on instructions from President Mahmoud Abbas, sent a letter to the US State Department asking to end funding in January for fear of lawsuits under the new law, including aid to the Palestinian security services, the official news agency reported.
This comes in conjunction with the passing of a new US anti-terrorism law which stipulates that any government receiving US funding will be subject to prosecution in US courts.
USAID has a major office in Tel Aviv and another in Jerusalem, through which it manages projects and programs in the Palestinian territories.
The secretary general of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Saeb Erekat, told a press conference Thursday that all offices, institutions and projects of the US Agency for International Development, which were opened in 1967, will be closed as of Friday, and hundreds of Palestinian workers and staff will be laid off.
The US administration has cut $844 million allocated for the Palestinian people and their institutions. This has led to the suspension of road, schools, sewage and water projects. These projects were stopped in the West Bank and Gaza before they were completed, he added.
The US government's Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided more than $5.5bn to the Palestinians since 1994 for infrastructure, health, education, governance and humanitarian aid programmes, all intended to underpin the eventual creation of an independent state.
The Trump administration's decision last year to cut more than $200m in development aid to the Palestinians is forcing NGOs to slash programmes and lay off staff as the effects ripple through a community that has spent more than two decades promoting peace in the Middle East.
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