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Could Taiwan’s donation pledge for Israeli settlement project backfire?

‘I don’t think Palestinians will be going there for medical services. I’m not buying it,’ NGO monitor says

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Taiwan’s representative in Israel, Abby Lee, visits the Binyamin Regional Council in Samaria, on July 6. Taiwan’s donation will fund the Nanasi Medical Centre at Sha’ar Binyamin, north of Jerusalem. Photo: Handout
Taiwan’s recent pledge to donate to an Israeli settlement health project in the West Bank has broken international norms of engagement with Israel’s occupation and could backfire, experts say.
Abby Ya-Ping Lee, Taiwan’s representative to Israel, made the donation pledge this month during a visit to the Binyamin Regional Council, which governs 48 settler communities in the occupied West Bank.

She was accompanied by Israel Ganz, chairman of the Binyamin Regional Council and the Yesha Council, the umbrella organisation of municipal councils of settlement communities.

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The donation will fund the Nanasi Medical Centre at Sha’ar Binyamin, north of Jerusalem.

The donation is the island’s latest attempt to foster closer ties with Israel, which is under growing international pressure for its war in Gaza, a conflict that UN experts have called a genocide.

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Israeli air strikes shatter ceasefire, leave hundreds dead in Gaza

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But experts argue this development is different.

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