The Middle East Regional Cooperation program (MERC), a long-standing grant program supporting scientific collaboration between Israel and Arab states, was among those terminated when the Trump administration abruptly shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this year, according to new whistleblower documents released by Senate Democrats.

According to a spreadsheet of terminated programs and awards shared by a whistleblower with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and released by Punchbowl News, more than $32 million in MERC grant programs have been canceled by the Trump administration.

The MERC program dates back to 1979, when it was created by Congress to contribute to Israeli-Egyptian relations following the Camp David Accords. The program grew to include Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.

“The overall goal of the MERC Program is to promote research, scientific exchange, capacity building, and development cooperation between Israel and its regional neighbors in support of locally-developed solutions for common regional challenges and a comprehensive and lasting Middle East peace,” a notice of funding opportunity for the program reads.

The program had over 40 active grants, according to a contractor that facilitated the program, focusing on areas including agriculture, water management, public health, sustainability and conservation, and aimed to support direct collaboration between Israelis and Arabs without the need for U.S. mediation.

The cancellation of the program comes in spite of the Trump administration’s promotion of the Abraham Accords and its stated intention to pursue normalized relations between Israel and additional Arab countries.

The State Department, which has taken over responsibility for USAID and its programming, did not respond to a request for comment.

At least $58 million in programs under the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act, for programs including Israeli-Palestinian cooperation on issues including nursing, mental health, technology, youth athletics and other areas, were also canceled.

At least $1 billion in humanitarian and development funding for the West Bank and Gaza is also listed as impacted by the USAID shutdown, as well as $380 million in various forms of assistance for Lebanon; $550 million primarily for food, medical, sanitation and other basic assistance in Syria; $183 million for programs in Yemen; and around $1 billion for programs including education, health and other assistance in Jordan.

Following a meeting on Wednesday with Peter Marocco, the acting USAID administrator, Senate Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee said in a joint statement that they had “more questions than answers” and that Marocco had failed to provide “thoughtful metrics, timelines or attention to U.S. national security priorities, including the health and safety of Americans” or show evidence of fraud and waste.

“What’s happening under Mr. Marocco is not reform — it is a wrecking ball that violates the law and makes our country less safe while compromising our values, creating opportunities for our adversaries and abandoning decades long partnerships,” the Democrats said.

Bonnie Glick had some unfinished tasks on her agenda as she anticipated the final months of her brief stint as deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under President Donald Trump. 

Among the items atop her list were stopping China from leading the 5G mobile technology competition around the world and building upon the recent Middle East agreements — including the Abraham Accords between the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Bahrain and a more recent deal with Sudan — as part of the agency’s primary focus of distributing resources to poor and developing countries.

The agency’s acting administrator, John Barsa, was supposed to hand over the reins to Glick and return to his previous role as assistant administrator at the bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean at the end of the 210-day legal limit on his appointment. But three days after the November election, Glick, who became the second highest-ranking official at USAID in January 2019, was fired in a move to extend Barsa’s term as acting administrator. 

The maneuver came after Glick was unwilling to say, in public or in private, that she would not transition to the incoming Biden administration, an official in the current administration, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told JI. In a letter delivered to her on Friday afternoon, John McEntee, the director of the Presidential Personnel Office, wrote that “pursuant to the direction of the president,” she was immediately terminated. 

In an interview with Jewish Insider on Friday, Glick refused to discuss the reason for her firing in what she described as a “little bit of a topsy-turvy week,” but acknowledged that there was “general consensus” that her termination was “without cause.” 

In a statement released on November 6, the agency said, “The entire USAID family owes Bonnie a debt of gratitude for her leadership and her accomplishments and wishes her well in all of her future endeavors.” 

The White House did not return a request for comment. 

Glick has since joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies as a senior advisor, where she intends to continue the work she was doing at USAID. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for me to be able to continue what I was doing, to participate in the discussions around the issues that are important to me,” she said. 

Glick told JI she will not be joining the Biden administration, but expressed hope that the issues she worked on while at the agency will be picked up by the next administration. “And one of the things that I’m committed to is ensuring, to the extent that I’m able, that there’s an orderly transition from the Trump administration to the Biden administration, and I’m hopeful that the career staff who are there will be allowed to proceed with transition-planning,” she added. 

A government official told JI the staff at the agency “are angry and in silent revolt.” 

Glick expressed concern about the lack of cooperation on behalf of the Trump administration to ensure a smooth transition of power. “One of the things that USAID promotes around the world is democracy and transparent government. And so now, I believe we need to practice what we preach,” she explained. “And to the extent that the [Trump administration] is not properly transitioning to an incoming administration it sends a really bad signal to developing countries.”