or taking sides in this tragic conflict." ... Responding to the letter, a State Department spokesman said that the UN is taking "proactive steps to address this problem," including deploying munitions experts to the strip in search of more weapons caches. "The international community cannot accept a situation where the United Nations– its facilities, staff, and those it is protecting — are used as shields for militants and terrorist groups," State Department spokesone Edgar Vasquez told The Jerusalem Post. "We remain in intensive consultations with UN leadership about the UN's response." ... "There are few good solutions given the exceptionally difficult situation in Gaza," Vasquez continued, "but nonetheless we are in contact with the United Nations, other UNRWA donors, and concerned parties – including Israel – on identifying better options for protecting the neutrality of UN facilities and ensuring that weapons discovered are handled appropriately and do not find their way back to Hamas or other terrorist groups." U.S. ends funding 2018 Citing a "failure to mobilize adequate and appropriate burden sharing," the Trump administration stopped funding UNRWA, calling its fundamental business model and fiscal practices "simply unsustainable". Secretary Pompeo maintained that "most Palestinians under UNRWA's jurisdiction aren't refugees, and UNRWA is a hurdle to peace." EU stops funding 2021 On September 2021, the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee approved withholding 20 million Euros in aid to UNRWA if immediate changes to UNRWA's education curriculum are not made. According to the resolution, the Parliament “is concerned about the hate speech and violence taught in Palestinian school textbooks and used in schools by UNRWA... [and] insists that UNRWA acts in full transparency... to ensure that content adheres to UN values and does not encourage hatred.” Relations with Israel After Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the June 1967 Six-Day War, it requested that the UNRWA continue its operations there, which it would facilitate. Since then the relationship has been characterized by two-state advocate Baruch Spiegel, as "an uneasy marriage of convenience between two unlikely bedfellows that have helped perpetuate the problem both have allegedly sought to resolve." Immediately following the Six-Day War, on 14 June UNRWA Commissioner-General Dr. Lawrence Michelmore and Political Advisor to the Israeli Foreign Minister Michael Comay exchanged letters that has since served as much of the basis for the relationship between Israel and UNRWA. Commonly referred to the Comay-Michelmore Exchange of Letters, the initial letter