The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel are working together to eliminate the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian Refugees, the French newspaper Le Monde has reported. The report came months after the normalization of ties between the two states.

According to the details, the process of elimination of UNRWA has been gradually in place since August when UAE and Isreal signed the historic peace deal and announced the beginning of formal diplomatic relations.

Created in 1949, the UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency responsible for the welfare of Palestine refugees. Historically, the United States has been UNRWA's largest single donor but under the Trump administration had decided to cut its contributions from $360m to $60m in 2018 and then down further to zero for 2019. However, the UAE decided to cut back on its funding to the agency in 2020.

Israel has long maintained that UNRWA is 'obstructing peace' and should be eliminated. in a tweet said:

"According to information from Le Monde, Emirati officials are considering an action plan intended to gradually eliminate UNRWA, without making this development conditional on a resolution of the refugee problem," Le Monde journalist Benjamin Barthe said in a tweet and added, "In doing so, Abu Dhabi would be rallying to a long-standing demand from Israel, which insists that the agency is obstructing peace by nurturing refugees in the dream of returning to the lands from which their parents were driven, in 1948."