Non-governmental organizations in Israel, Judea and Samaria ought to learn two major lessons from the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development—that they should not rely solely on aid from one country and they must align their missions with states that fund them.
That’s according to Meredith Rothbart, co-founder and CEO of Amal-Tikva, a Jerusalem nonprofit that builds “capacity for sustainable and scalable peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians,” per its website.
“With the organizations we work with, we have always said, ‘Don’t be reliant on any one donor,’” Rothbart told JNS. “‘Make sure that you have diverse income, so that if you lose that funding, you know you’ll be able to operate and you won’t be completely overwhelmed by that.’”
Rothbart shared that advice with the groups that work with her nonprofit during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term in office, during which he also cut USAID funding.
The USAID homepage states that as of “Feb. 23, 2025, all USAID direct hire personnel, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and/or specially designated programs, will be placed on administrative leave globally.”
The sudden shuttering of USAID operations overseas impacted nonprofits in Israel in particular, according to Rothbart.
Loss of funding required nonprofits to lay off staff and, in some instances, to close down. Israeli law requires 30 days notice before terminating an employee, Rothbart said, but some nonprofits didn’t have enough money to keep paying staff that long.
“Those organizations are really in a pickle legally and financially,” she told JNS. “Some funders are trying to chip in and help cover immediate costs, so that staff aren’t breaking the law.”
On March 10, Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state whom Trump also named acting USAID administrator, stated that “after a six week review, we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID.”
“The 5,200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, and in some cases even harmed, the core national interests of the United States,” Rubio stated. “In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1,000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.”
A federal judge ruled earlier this month that Trump overstepped his authority and cannot sit on the congressionally-appropriated USAID funding, ordering Trump officials to disburse approximately $2 billion it owed to aid groups and businesses up to mid-February.
But, the judge declined requests from nonprofit groups and businesses to reinstate the canceled contracts, leaving it up to the Trump administration to decide on a case-by-case basis.
Amal-Tikva staff have been telling nonprofits with which it works not to expect the funding to return.
“There’s a lot of opportunity for private philanthropy to be engaged, which I think has a huge role,” Rothbart told JNS. “There’s a switch that needs to happen in donors’ minds and in civil society’s minds that impact needs to be clearly defined and measured, and that the projects that are being implemented are fulfilling a donor desire.”
The Trump administration has said that nonprofits that receive federal funding must align with U.S. interests. Critics of USAID have said that the agency was acting like an independent charity, which didn’t necessarily support programs that advance U.S. priorities.
“NGOs that are operating programs don’t see themselves as agents of the U.S. government, and so that disconnect exists,” Rothbart said. The Trump administration’s criticism “is true in a way,” she added.
USAID grantees sign contracts stating that their projects support U.S. foreign policy, which in and around Israel has, at times, meant peacebuilding and working toward a two-state solution. But the nonprofits don’t always have missions that correspond to what they put on paper, Rothbart said.
The broader USAID cuts are affecting “a multi-billion dollar industry” of nonprofits that rely on the agency and private donations and funding from Europe, according to Enia Krivine, senior director of the Israel programs and national security network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“There is a whole economy here based on these kinds of charitable gifts,” Krivine told JNS. “What is happening is a shock to the system.”
Krivine cited the collection of six hospitals known as the East Jerusalem Hospitals Network, which had its USAID funding cut during the first Trump administration only to see it later restored.
“It is truly an organization that is sort of a bastion of coexistence, with a prenatal program that is participated in by Jewish and Arab women and the nurses were Jewish and Arabs,” Krivine said. “It is truly a good program.”
Krivine believes that after a more thorough review in coming months, the USAID-funded Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding and coexistence programs “that are worth their salt will stay.”
But the Palestinian Authority needs to take on a bigger role in funding its projects and basic services, as any capable government would be expected to do, according to Krivine.
“On the one hand, nobody wants to take away the money from these important programs that are supposed to reduce radicalization and try to help people,” she said. “But on the other hand, that’s a responsibility of government and the PA has plenty of resources to be able to provide these services to their people.”
Heather Johnston served on the board of the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act until December. All of the MEPPA programs that were approved, including distributing $250 million to Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding projects, were canceled due to USAID cuts.
Congress created MEPPA on a bipartisan basis in 2020 and Trump signed it into law in his first term. But USAID’s independent political interests got in the way, according to Johnston.
“The design of MEPPA was to create a situation where you were bringing Palestinians and Israelis together, and that included in education, in business, in a stratosphere of opportunities,” she said. “A lot of those projects seemed to be engaging Palestinians and Israelis in some good, important dialogue, and many projects that they could work on together.”
But USAID administrators discriminated against proposals for projects and grants originating from Jews living in Judea and Samaria, according to Johnston, founder and CEO of the U.S. Israel Education Association, the only nonprofit to bring congressional delegations into Judea and Samaria.
“That was tough because it was almost as if USAID couldn’t take on this new thing, MEPPA,” Johnston said.
Projects involving Jews living in Tel Aviv, or Palestinians living in Palestinian Authority-controlled territory, faced far less scrutiny, according to Johnston.
“None of the grants were honored for projects around businesses that pulled Israelis and Palestinians together inside Judea and Samaria. None of them,” she told JNS. “These were serious proposals, and so I think that MEPPA’s original intent really didn’t happen.”