We’ve written a bunch about how Congress has frozen assistance to the Palestinians.
As I noted in my most recent story, there’s a bit of a spanner in how the cuts work, at least in the immediate future.
The funds that would be least controversial to cut — the ones that would go to the ministries and that could be painted (fairly or not) by opponents of the assistance as fattening a bureaucracy — have already gone out.
The money for the Palestinian security forces, Israel backs, at least for now.
That leaves money for humanitarian assistance, and that’s what’s being held.
NPR has a good snapshot of how Palestinians are already feeling those cuts:
The Palestinian Medical Center, the largest hospital in the West Bank city of Ramallah, is filled with patients. Doctors bolt down the hallways with slips of paper, and nurses frantically send out text messages to physicians in other departments.
There is no intercom or communication system in the hospital. One was supposed to be established later this year. But now, like many other programs at this hospital, the U.S.-funded project has been suddenly halted.
Dr. Niha Sawaheh is the head of the Emergency Department, where she says the system would have been particularly useful.
"Once we get an emergency case, so you just press the button and all the emergency doctors would be with you within second. We were working on that, but it has been stopped now," she says.
Read the whole thing.
