Palestinian Authority Slams Netherlands Over Halting of Aid to NGO

The Palestinian Authority on Monday condemned the Netherlands for stopping financial assistance to a Palestinian nongovernmental organization that Israel said was linked to a terrorist organization. Dr. Amal Jadou, the assistant minister on European affairs at the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, summoned the Netherlands Representative to the Palestinian Territories Kees van Baar to protest what the ministry said was an “unjust and biased” decision to halt aid to the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), which operates in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “The decision would negatively and directly affect tens of thousands of families with income based on agricultural activities, and thousands of acres of agricultural land in the areas threatened to be seized by Israel,” the ministry said in a statement. Jadou demanded that the Dutch government cancel its decision, “which is a dangerous precedent in undermining the work of civil society institutions,” the statement said. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz outlawed the UAWC along with several other Palestinian organizations in October of last year for alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which Israel considers to be a terrorist organization.