Kermit Kaput for Palestinian kids in 2012

By CNN's Jill Dougherty

An Arab-language version of the American children’s program, Sesame Street, watched by kids in the Palestinian Territories, is on hold for this year, victim of a decision by the U.S. Congress to freeze nearly $200 million in funds to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Called “Shara’a Simsim” in Arabic, the program is aimed at youngsters in the West bank and Gaza and is funded through the USAID.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed the cut-off Tuesday. “Unfortunately, Kermit is not able to be supported at this moment,” she said.

“Unfortunately, with the cut in economic support funds we had to make some hard tradeoffs and that was one of the things that we’ve not been able to do.”

The State Department pushed for full funding of U.S. economic support funds for the Palestinians but, the Palestinian Authority’s bid last autumn for U.N. membership angered members of Congress. The bid failed but UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, subsequently voted Palestine in as a full member, triggering the vote to freeze the funding.

Funding for Israeli television broadcasts to Arab and Jewish children will continue, Nuland said. That programming comes from a different U.S. government funding stream, the State Department spokeswoman said. “We have always supported television for young kids, kindergarten age kids, which is broadcast by Israeli TV to kids in both Israel and in the Palestinian territories,” Nuland said, “which supports the goal of kids understanding that they share citizenship, that Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews need to live together, that they are neighbors with the Palestinians.”

Scientific studies, she told reporters, indicate that if children are exposes to positive programming at a young age, even before they are in school, it can influence them.