Rethinking Humanitarianism | Is aid sustaining Palestine's occupation? 

Heba Aly
Last month, an attack into Israel by the political and militant group Hamas killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, at least 70% of them civilians. Since then, more than 2 million Palestinians living in the occupied Gaza Strip have been under heavy Israeli bombardment  and a near-total siege.

Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General: “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children.  Hundreds of girls and boys are reportedly being killed or injured every day. […] But the trickle of assistance does not meet the ocean of need.”

Melissa Fundira
While the United Nations and several governments have been advocating for urgent humanitarian aid to be allowed into the Gaza Strip, some say that misses the point.

Mariam Barghouti, What’s Unsaid podcast: “They don't want coffee and tea, which is usually never enough. What they need is for these agencies to say is give the Palestinians enough so that they can pursue self-determination. So that they feel safe enough to say we want to be free. So that they can gather together and have conversations about imagining what it means to be free.

Heba Aly

Gaza is a strip of land bordered by Egypt, Israel and the Mediterranean Sea. It has been under Israeli occupation for more than half a century, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Aid has been a reality in Gaza for decades. International aid organisations have been working there since the Israeli occupation began in 1967, and UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees – has been there even longer, for nearly 75 years, since the founding of the state of Israel resulted in the displacement of around 700,000 Palestinians.

Melissa Fundira

Even before the current crisis, 80% of Gazans relied on international humanitarian aid for survival – that’s according to the UN. And yet, under international law, it’s the occupying power’s responsibility to provide food, shelter, medicine, and other needs essential to the survival of the occupied population. So do aid agencies let Israel off the hook?   

Heba Aly

And, by providing enough aid to keep them alive, but not enough for Palestinians to really live, are aid agencies complicit in the suffering of Palestinians, because as the crisis in Palestine has become chronic, humanitarian interventions have failed to actively challenge the very thing that creates the need for aid in the first place: Israel’s occupation.

From Geneva, Switzerland, I’m Heba Aly.

Melissa Fundira

And from Toronto, Canada, I’m Melissa Fundira. This is Rethinking Humanitarianism, a podcast about the future of aid in a world of rising crisis.

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Melissa Fundira

So, Heba, as we’re entering the second month since Hamas’ attack on civilians in Israel on the seventh of October, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 11,000 people in Gaza. And more than 4,000 of them are children. This is according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which is governed by Hamas. And for those that are still alive, they're struggling to find food, they're struggling to find clean drinking water, electricity, and all other basic needs. UNRWA, meanwhile, has lost 101 staffers – this is the highest death toll that the United Nations has ever recorded in any one conflict. But these are just the figures that I'm telling you at the time of this recording. These are figures that will no doubt be higher by the time our listeners are listening to this podcast. But Heba, before we really get into the topic of this episode. This is obviously a very difficult subject. So many people are personally affected by it. How are you doing? 

Heba Aly

Um, not well, if I'm honest. This is difficult on a number of friends. I have extended family in Gaza, friends in Gaza. My mother's husband's family has now moved from the north to the south, and they're living in one room struggling to find water. I have a friend who lost 12 members of her family. I just checked on her the other day and said, ‘How are you doing today?’ She said, ‘My family back home are still alive.’ So for that to be the gauge of if someone's having a good day or not… are they still alive today?

And then I also talk to people who have devoted their lives to trying to create peace in the Middle East, and in particular, working with peace activists in Palestine and in Israel, and the pain that they feel in seeing some of those peace activists being the target of the Hamas attacks, and just how senseless that seems. So everyone is just suffering in this. There are many conflicts around the world that we cover in which these kinds of horrific crimes are happening, but, I think part of what makes this hard, even for people who have no connection to it, is this feeling of a sense of impotence in the face of all of this violence, and what I think many see as glaring injustice and the inability to do anything about it. So yeah, it's hard. How about you? How are you feeling? 

Melissa Fundira

Well, not much better. I think like a lot of people, I've gotten into the habit of waking up first thing in the morning and checking on Bisan Owda and Motaz Azaiza and all the people who have been reporting live from Gaza, and hoping, one, that they're alive, and two, once I know that they are because they're still posting, I'm watching videos of family members digging through the rubble to recover their mothers and their fathers and their siblings and their neighbours. Videos of children shaking from the shock of what they're experiencing. It's hard enough to watch, I can't imagine living it. And, as we know, UN experts are warning of a potential genocide, and that's part of the reason why they're calling for a ceasefire – to prevent a genocide. And so as a human being, and as a Rwandan who lost a lot of family members during the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, I can't help but see parallels. I grew up without two of my grandparents, aunties, uncles, countless extended family. I don't even know the number. And that's the kind of trauma that stays in families for generations. And the parallels I'm also hearing is in the language, the statements of Israeli officials, saying things like: ‘We are fighting human animals’; ‘Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist’. Obviously, I'm going to think about genocidaires on RTLM radio in Rwanda calling the Tutsi cockroaches. You can't help but feel that dehumanisation. And then also just having loved ones who are descendants of Palestinian refugees. At the same time, I don't envy what it must feel like to be Israeli and Jewish at this time. People like my friend who have lost family members in Hamas’ attack but at the same time are watching the Israeli government attack Gazans in their name and having to hold both of those griefs at the same time. There's just pain and grief and loss all around. I think that's part of the reason why this crisis has really captured the attention of so many people around the world. 

Heba Aly 

And it's within this context of extreme grief and violence that humanitarian workers are also trying to deliver medical supplies, food, water, [and] fuel to more than 2 million Palestinians, many of them Palestinian themselves, of course, and going through the same challenges as everyone else. So I just want to be clear as we go into this conversation that the urgent need for humanitarian aid in Gaza in this moment is indisputable. Right? 1.5 million Gazans have been displaced. The amount of aid getting into the Gaza Strip is a trickle compared to what it was before the seventh of October when the needs weren't nearly as high as they are now. And on top of that, aid agencies like UNRWA are operating on budgets that have dwindled over the years, so they're really not in an ideal position to be able to respond. 

Melissa Fundira

With that in mind as we discuss whether aid has distracted from the kind of transformation that can lead to lasting peace in the region, we just really wanted to give that disclaimer, that this episode isn't questioning the need for aid in times of emergency. But as aid agencies think about their overall role in Palestine moving forward, it's worth looking back at what aid has and hasn't accomplished in the last 50-plus years. Has it helped the state of Palestinians, or has it actually hurt them by disincentivizing a long term solution that would respect the right to self determination for Palestinians? And if aid in Palestine needs a massive rethink, then what could it look like? 

Heba Aly

So today we're joined by two guests with intimate knowledge of aid and Palestine. Yara Asi is an assistant professor in the School of Global Health Management and Informatics at the University of Central Florida, where her research focuses on global health, human rights and development in fragile populations. She's worked with Doctors Without Borders, with Amnesty International [USA], and with the Palestinian American Research Center. And she's also the co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, which is a partnership between Harvard University and Birzeit University. And finally, she is a US Fulbright scholar to the West Bank where she's from. But today she joins us from Orlando, Florida. Welcome Yara.  

Yara Asi 

Thank you, Heba.

Melissa Fundira

And Chris Gunness is the former spokesperson for UNRWA, the largest aid organisation in Gaza. He no longer represents UNRWA, but spent 12 years working with them. Today, he joins us from London, England. Welcome, Chris. 

Chris Gunness 

Hi. It's lovely to be here. Thank you. 

Heba Aly

Yara, Chris, you both have close ties to Gaza or, as it said in Arabic, and to Palestine in Israel more broadly, and it's been a truly devastating time for everyone affected by this conflict. How are you doing? Yara, how has the last month been for you and what are you hearing from the people you know in Gaza?

Yara Asi 

Yeah, thank you for starting with this question. I don't know a single Palestinian anywhere in the world who is doing okay at this moment. The pictures, the videos, the death toll that seems to grow every time you check, and then the overwhelming global support of these acts that are causing such destruction. The dehumanisation of Palestinians that we're witnessing. It's been extremely difficult. And I have been in touch with some former students and colleagues in Gaza, who just a month or two ago were graduating college, preparing for weddings, going about life. And now their texts are reduced to ‘I'm alive. I'm here now. This is the fifth time I’ve fled. My cousin has died.’ It's just been really shocking to witness.

Heba Aly

It's hard to… it's just hard to listen to. Chris, what about you? What are you hearing from your former colleagues? 

Chris Gunness

Well, nothing but bad news. I mean, typical morning, I open my emails and I get a message from UNRWA saying somebody who I knew well – [who] I worked with at this amazing Summer Games project we used to have in Gaza, where we gave children a chance just to have fun during the summer – that one of the leading lights of that, and his four children, and his wife were killed in an overnight strike in the south in an area that was meant to be safe. I have other messages from middle class families who are bombed out of their house have gone south. One of my best friends, they're now living in an apartment with 50 people, they have one toilet and no water. So, the level of indignity and inhumanity that people have been reduced to is absolutely appalling. And I should say that on the other side, I'm married to an Israeli. And so I have family members, and I have friends from the kibbutzim which were directly affected. Most of them that I know, know people who were killed in this appalling violence that took place on the seventh of October. So you know, on the one hand, I hear messages from former colleagues in Gaza, colleagues being killed living in absolute destitution. And on the other hand, family members who are completely traumatised. So, you know, I've never done anything like it. And I mean, the really depressing thing is both in the short, the middle, and long term, I feel completely lost. I just don't know what is going to happen. I don't know what the frameworks are – either intellectually for just trying to understand what's happening, but also politically, in terms of where the way out of all this is. So yeah, it's been a pretty desperate month.

Heba Aly 

And I should just clarify on the back of your comment about your partner that, because The New Humanitarian mandate is to focus on people who are caught up in humanitarian crises, we don't spend as much time talking about what happened on the Israeli side, because it's just not a humanitarian crisis in the same way where people are in need of water, and shelter, and food, and fuel. But that isn't to belittle, in any way, the – as you say – the very horrific violence that happened on that side of the border as well. 

Melissa Fundira

And not only are the two of you intimately tied to the people and the place where all of this is happening, but you also have an intimate knowledge of aid agencies in the region, which have been there going back as far as 1950 in the case of UNRWA. And if you had to summarise, what role has aid played in Palestine over the years? Yara I'll start with you.

Yara Asi  

Yeah, this is a great question. And I think we have to frame this in distinct time periods. So there's up until the Oslo Accords, and especially following the occupation of 1967, much of the aid in the region was emergency aid. A lot of what we're seeing now: just simply getting in food, water, basic medicines, trying to prevent infectious disease outbreak, trying to improve some living standards. Because at the time, they did not know that this would continue for 40, 50, 60 more years. 

Since the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s, which ostensibly were created with the intention to have a Palestinian state, a sovereign Palestinian state within five years of their passage, suddenly we started seeing aid shift to more state-building apparatus. So we have this newly formed Palestinian Authority. We have all of these ministries underneath it: a Ministry of Education, a Ministry of Health. They needed staff, they needed infrastructure, they needed to build public hospitals and support the hospitals that had been built. And so suddenly, you started seeing significant influxes of aid to Palestine, often through aid agencies, but often working in tandem with these newly formed ministries in an effort to, again, build a state. Now, we all know that the state was not built, certainly not by 1999, and not by today, 2023. And because the conditions of occupation in Gaza since [the] 2006 blockade have really stifled the ability for Palestinians to develop their own infrastructure, to import things, to leave Gaza to go get training elsewhere, to even import in Gaza things like cement and lumber, it's very difficult to do so. So you've seen aid try to fill in gaps that the occupation itself has created. 

In that time then, you have seen improvements and things like life expectancy and vaccination rates and graduation rates. It's a well known statistic that Palestinians are among the most educated in the region. And so we don't want to dispute that. And certainly agencies like UNRWA have truly kept these refugee populations alive and maintained in these refugee communities all of this time. However, we have also seen food insecurity increase and poverty increase. These are gaps that aid cannot fill, it's not meant to fill. This is what a sovereign state with a responsive government is supposed to do. There's this significant gap in how much aid Palestinians have been given and their ability to improve on certain indicators. And so then, in times of crisis, as we see now in Gaza, but also in the West Bank, which is also undergoing a significant crisis at the moment, you're seeing the real limitations that aid simply cannot account for or fill in gaps that are created by an environment of such violence and restriction.

Melissa Fundira  

Pretty thorough summary. Chris, is there anything you would add to that? 

Chris Gunness 

From an UNRWA perspective – UNRWA was operational on the ground in May 1950, and as its title suggests, it did relief, which meant bringing emergency assistance to those who just a year and a half after the 1948 war were living in desperate refugee camps and needed food, medicines, shelter, water, sanitation, all those sorts of assistance. But then also to provide works. So the idea was that refugees would be settled where they were, which was Jordan, Syria, the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon. But when it became clear that that wasn't going to happen, UNRWA started to provide what states should be providing, i.e. a massive education program, and a very large primary health program. So today, UNRWA has over 500 schools around the Middle East and about 150 primary health care [facilities]. And as Yara was suggesting, this is what governments should be doing. And to that extent, UNRWA is a sort of displacement therapy for democracy. You know, it's what a democratic government should be doing for the Palestinians. The trouble is: (a) Israel has never really allowed the Palestinians to have a functioning state; and the [Palestinian Authority]  and its supporters have not been able to deliver a functioning government. So although I agree with the tenure of this discussion: that UNRWA encourages a dependency; it makes a political solution less likely. It puts the Palestinians (a) on life support, because it's giving humanitarian assistance, for example, as it's doing today in Gaza, but b) it's providing longer term development assistance, health education, it even has a microfinance department, it's part of the economy. So emergency assistance, yes, it has to do because it finds itself in a war in Gaza, we found ourselves in a war in Syria, in Lebanon, there’s endemic insecurity in Jordan, terrible socio-economic problems in the Palestinian refugee camps. So yes, these terrible circumstances – war and instability and violence – mean that UNRWA has to do this emergency work. But at the same time, because of the lack of a political process, and because of the fragility of the Palestine refugees where they are around the Middle East, UNRWA has found itself providing long term development assistance. And I think that is absolutely wrong. The Palestinians do not want an aid organisation run by foreigners to be providing them services, which their governments should be providing. It's an insult, frankly.

Heba Aly  11:49

I think there's a chicken and egg thing there. Is UNRWA providing that because of a lack of a political process, or is UNRWA providing that leading to a lack of a political process. And maybe we can get into some of that nuance. But I do want to acknowledge what you said in terms of just the framing of this conversation. So I do want to distinguish between the need for aid in the current crisis versus what we're talking about here, given that this is a moment in which I think we've got people's attention to start asking some of those deeper questions around the role of aid more broadly. And also to distinguish between, I think as you've done, humanitarian aid and then the longer term development aid

Chris Gunness  12:45

And also, Heba, the framing of the question should not detract from the primary responsibility for the occupation, and that is Israel that's occupying Palestinian land. We now know these recently revealed comments from [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, that he wanted to do everything he could, for example support Hamas, in order to avoid giving the Palestinians a viable state. We know that settler violence protected by the IDF, the Israeli army, has gone up exponentially in the last couple of years with this very, very right-wing, pro-settlement government in Israel. So, it's absolutely proper to frame the question as you are. But let's not forget that the occupation is there, not because of an aid organisation, but because a foreign army is waging a belligerent occupation against the Palestinians on their land. And it's doing that with the full complicity of the international system. The Quartet where I worked, when I first went to Palestine, I was in the UN political office that, frankly, provided an enabling environment in which Israel could continue with the occupation, impose a blockade of Gaza, and refuse to address one of the least-discussed underlying causes of the conflict, and that is dealing with the dispossession of the Palestinians, which took place in 1948. And unless and until those three issues are addressed by Israel, obviously and the Palestinians, but with the full support of the international system, I'm afraid that Israel is destined to continue having to deal with this appalling insecurity, and the Palestinians will continue to be deprived of a functioning state and you know, the peace and dignity and the rights which they crave.

Heba Aly  

You mentioned that your partner is Israeli, I’d love to know what the dinner conversation is like at your house. 

Melissa Fundira  

To your point, Chris, about the complicity of the international system, one of the inspirations for this podcast really is an article, Yara, that you wrote for The New Humanitarian last year, in which you very bluntly say that international aid has failed Palestinians. What's the argument that you're laying out there?

Yara Asi  15:02

One of the questions I asked in the piece is: As the years since Oslo slip by, nobody seems to know what the purpose of aid in Palestine is anymore. Is it meant to support institution-building for two states, or just to provide decades of emergency funding for a population undergoing violence and deprivation? And that's – when I talk to Palestinians – their big question. And frequently, what they'll tell me is, these agencies want to keep the focus on purely humanitarian issues [and] completely disconnect from addressing issues of occupation, of complaining about movement restrictions, of – even really, in some instances – calling Israel a perpetrator in any sense to begin with. It's: ‘Let's talk about the poverty rate, let's talk about how many babies need incubators’. All of that is great, but if we're not willing to address the core, the root causes (a phrase that we've seen so often), then I don't understand, and Palestinians I think also don't understand, how this is meant to benefit them. They see this as subsidising the occupation. As Chris rightfully said, this is occupied territory. This is the accepted international position. It is the fringe position to call it anything aside from occupied territory. And thus, Israel does have responsibilities towards Palestinian health, towards Palestinian freedoms, towards Palestinian rights. Occupation is meant to be temporary. It is not meant to last this long. And so, when it goes on this long and has created such obvious gaps in people's ability to care for themselves and live for their own lives, and yet you're unwilling to address what causes the gaps, I think that's really where the disconnect lies. 

On the other hand, aid is not meant to fix these problems. That's a whole other layer of this. But I think where this comes into play is, these same countries who send Israel arms, who provide Israel rhetorical, political, diplomatic support for everything that they're doing, are unwilling to criticise Israel, criticise the Palestinians for being aid dependent, criticise how much money the Palestinians have got since Oslo, and ‘Look at how terrible things still are’ – these are the same countries that then will throw a few crumbs to aid agencies that are meant to help Palestinians. And so I think Palestinians see this as disingenuous. On the one hand, you're supporting the entity that is doing the bombing, that is putting up the checkpoints, that is standing by while settlers attack us and demolish our homes and bomb hospitals and schools, and on the other hand, you are kind of like, ‘Hey, guys, get your act together. Where's the state that you told us you were gonna [build].’ Nevermind the fact that none of the conditions for statehood have actually come to fruition on the Israeli side, which, let's remember, this is not an equal power dynamic. Israel is a sovereign state with a military. It's a high income country, Israel has universal health care, compared to a stateless population, the Palestinians. I think people are incredibly frustrated. And now we're to the point where we've seen 2, 3, 4 generations go through this cycle, they're extremely disillusioned and I don't think we can blame them.

Chris Gunness  

I entirely share their disillusionment with aid. But I think we have to be careful in not making what philosophers call a category error here. There are two categories here: there's the political, and there's the humanitarian. And somehow expecting humanitarian action to solve a political problem is unrealistic. And I used to say that to my Palestinian friends and colleagues. It's like guys, don't expect UNRWA to end the occupation. UNRWA is mandated to help you do various things like deal with the day-to-day problems in your lives, whether that's feeding your children, or dealing with a desalination plant in Gaza, or getting fuel to the water pumps, whatever it may be. But to deal with the political issues, such as ending the blockade, ending the occupation, dealing with possession – that's going to take a political push. And UNRWA simply isn't mandated. It sounds really sort of pin-headed UN and bureaucrats speak  and it embarrasses me to say this, but UNRWA isn't mandated to end the occupation. And you know, when I was the UNRWA spokesman, I used to get into real trouble, not just with Israelis, but with people inside the UN. Actually, interestingly, a lot of the real stuff I have to deal with came from the UN's political office rather than the Israelis, but they were always very, very clear that I should not start saying things which were about political issues. So for example, I used to talk about accountability. I used to talk about war crimes. When several of our schools were hit in 2014 in that conflict, I spoke out very robustly and said that there should be war crimes investigations, because it looked to me if war crimes were being committed. We had disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks on schools where the UN flag was flying, where refugees assumed that they would be a neutral space. The minute anyone in UNRWA starts talking out in a more political way, they get into trouble. So I think, certainly when I was there, we pushed the boundaries as much as we possibly could. But expecting UNRWA, an aid organisation, to bring about a political objective, such as ending the occupation, as I say, is to make a category error. It simply isn't going to happen and UNRWA isn’t mandated to do that. 

But at the same time, I really understand the frustrations of the Palestinians that Yara speaks of. But you know, again, we have to point the spotlight back at those parties who are responsible: the political actors. Principally, the Americans – who, as we've seen in the last month, have done nothing practically but give Israel a green light to do pretty much what it likes – and the other parties around The Quartet, which, frankly, historically has been completely useless.

Heba Aly  

But there's a line, Chris, between what I think you rightly say is the boundaries of humanitarian action, and this question of whether, in receiving that funding in the condition in which it is given, that UNRWA is complicit in maintaining the status quo. Or as some goes so far as to say, disincentivizing peace. So yes, you can't end the conflict, but is your presence sustaining the conflict?

Chris Gunness  

It's a very armchair discussion. I mean, if you're a mother who desperately needs the UNRWA food parcel every month to feed their children; if you are a parent who knows that there is no real alternative to an UNRWA school in Gaza; if you are in Lebanon and you need tertiary cancer care, there is nothing but UNRWA. So okay, let's take UNRWA away this afternoon: what happens to the Palestinians? What happens to the Palestine refugees? It's very easy for us to sit around in our capital cities in our armchairs and say UNRWA is unhelpful, UNRWA is preventing the end of the occupation, UNRWA is doing all these very bad things, but take UNRWA away, and it's the very poorest and most disadvantaged of the Palestinians that would object first. And you never ever hear the poor Palestinians say, ‘Let's get rid of UNRWA’.

Yara Asi  

UNRWA’s mandate is very specifically relief and protection. I think it's also vital to remember that the only reason UNRWA must continue to exist is because the international community has completely sidelined the issue of Palestinian refugees altogether. 

Chris Gunness

Absolutely.

Yara Asi

And early on in this process, at the same time UNRWA was established, the UN also established the Conciliation Commission for Palestine, the UNCCP, which was, while UNRWA was delivering aid and relief, was meant to actually do the political part. And that that agency has been utterly sidelined. And the international community has been far more comfortable just giving money for medicines, food and water, rather than, again, dealing with the root causes. And so I think, we have to also keep that in mind when we criticise aid agencies, that their mandates are only necessary because the world is happy to continue keeping it this way. As long as we're not seeing mass starvation and mass famine, they are absolutely fine to keep Palestine off the international agenda.

Chris Gunness  

And I would go further than what Yara has just said, and I agree with everything she just said, and that is we need to shine a light and point the finger at the member states, because it's not UNRWA that gives itself a mandate, it is the General Assembly which rolls over. And that's all 195 countries in the United Nations. And they have made the choice, they have decided, that aid to UNRWA will be a displacement for rights and dignity. They have decided that instead of giving the Palestinians their full political rights in the context of a state, the decision has been taken, that humanitarian aid of the sort that's given through UNRWA to the Palestinian refugees is somehow a substitute for full political rights. But that key and sinful decision in my view – I think it's morally reprehensible, it's disgraceful - that decision is taken by the donors, and its donors who should be answering the question ‘Why are you using aid to deprive the Palestinians of their rights?’ Their full political rights, all the rights embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, because that is what the Palestinians are being deprived of. And it's a choice which the member states of the United Nations have made, led by the Americans, led by the Brits, led by the Europeans. They're all complicit in this. But it's so easy to blame an aid organisation and say, ‘You're the reason why the Palestinians don't have a state. You're the reason - because you're running schools and health clinics - why the Palestinians don't have a functioning government.’ No. The reason why the Palestinians don't have a functioning government is (a) because Israel will not allow that to happen, and (b) the international community has been complicit in that disgraceful Israeli decision.

Melissa Fundira  

I get your point that this is essentially a political question, which we will get to. But I do want to get back to your point about how humanitarians and aid agencies are essentially stuck between a rock and a hard place. Because on the one hand, you risk being instrumentalized by Israel and its supporters by providing this very conditional aid that needs to be approved by Israel, but on the other hand, there would be catastrophic consequences if you ever halted providing that aid. How did you navigate that tension, that dilemma, when you were working at UNRWA?

Chris Gunness 

I mean, it was terrible. We had to apply it to the Israelis, a thing called COGAT [The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, a unit in the Israeli Ministry of Defense] to take everything into the Gaza Strip. And I used to say to colleagues, ‘Well hang on. This is prima facie evidence of collective punishment. We know the emails, addresses, and the ranks, and the phone numbers of all the people who are imposing the blockade of Gaza. That is collective punishment. It's a war crime. Why aren't we speaking out?’ 

But this illustrates the dilemma. On the one hand, UNRWA could have spoken out – and I used to talk about collective punishment all the time – but on the other hand, the Israelis, as they regularly did, could stop us delivering aid whenever they wanted. They would simply say ‘There's a security incident, you can't go through,’ or they would speak out politically and just say, ‘No, you can't take stuff through’. 

So it was always a balance between speaking out on issues of justice, accountability, denials of rights, violations of the Geneva Conventions, and the urgent need to help – when I was there – 1.2 million people who were desperately disadvantaged, who needed our assistance. I don't think we ever got the balance right, because the right thing to happen would be for UNRWA to go away. And by the way, UNRWA regularly used to say that it wanted nothing more than to go away. But it could only go away if the Palestinians, the refugees for example, are granted their political rights and their refugee status is resolved. There are over a million Palestine refugees in Jordan, there are 450,000 in Lebanon, but the circumstances in which they live are absolutely appalling. And that's because the Lebanese Government has decided that the right of return is the way that this will be resolved for the Palestine refugee population in Lebanon, and so they’re caught between the Lebanese government keeping them in this state of limbo, and the Israeli government which, of course, refuses the right of return. 

Heba Aly

It’s that same tension, right, between what's best for Palestinians in the short term versus in the long term. And we see that playing out even right now in the current crisis, where the pressure on Egypt to open its border and let Palestinians seek refuge is then in tension by some arguments. Would Egypt be collaborating with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian? And I think many argue that what Israel is trying to do right now in Gaza is not to destroy Hamas – because in any case, Hamas’ leadership is in Qatar, and they've never destroyed Hamas in any past bombing raids – but to empty Gaza. And so I think there's all these layers of complexity here that make the aid question very complicated.

Chris Gunness

I mean, just as I said with the arguments about aid – [that] there's the sort of armchair intellectual view and there's on the ground view – I would say the same sorts of dynamics exist with the question over the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. When I talk to friends in Gaza, they are so terrified. They’re there with their children who are deeply, deeply traumatised. All they want to do is get out to save their lives. Now, if you and your extended family are being bombed to pieces, and you're seeing apartment blocks around being completely smashed up, and you're seeing your neighbourhoods being bombed, and you're hearing reports [that] 10,000 people have now been killed and writing, do you really think I have the right to say, ‘Oh, you're gonna contribute to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine if you leave a war zone’.  I feel very, very uncomfortable about making that argument.

Yara Asi

I totally agree that there are people who do wish to leave for protection, to seek health care, just to get out of the situation. On the other hand, though, we can't just count the voices of many who are saying, ‘I'm staying in my home, and I know I will probably die here, and I won't leave regardless’.

Heba Aly

Right, but that should be their individual choice. 

Yara Asi

Exactly, exactly. An army should not be able to tell them, basically: ‘Evacuate. And if you don't, you're fair game.’ People who wish to leave to seek care should be able to leave with guarantees that they can return, and people who wish to stay in their homes and in dignity, or stay in their hospitals and continue to serve patients, or stay in their bakery - if any bakeries still exist - should also have that choice. 

And aid, I think, has been cynically used. Even a lot of the aid that has been distributed in the south where Israel wants folks to gather, which is another way of pushing people from the north, who, as Chris says, are in incredibly desperate circumstances. The North has been absolutely destroyed.

Chris Gunness

But Yara, That raises another very interesting point, which is: about 500,000 homes have been destroyed in northern and central Gaza. And over a million people have been displaced. Even if people did decide they wanted to go home, where would they go? They can't go home, because their homes are dust. They are flattened. They have nowhere to go. So we're going to reach a very interesting point when, I hope as soon as possible, the guns fall silent and the last missiles are fired, or whatever. What are people going to do in relation to this incredibly important question: do you go home? Because they don't have homes. You can have a debate about ethnic cleansing, you can have a debate about going home, you can have a debate about not leaving your ancestral land, but the fact is that people will soon be living without water, without electricity, without fuel, without food… 

Heba Aly

Well, they already are. 

Chris Gunness

Exactly. And the places in which they call their homes are completely flattened, and they cannot return to them. So what are you gonna do? Are you gonna set up a tented city in the Sinai and hope that UNHCR will do it and that Egypt will feel pressurised into doing it? Will Hamas allow that to happen? Because there's every indication that Hamas does not want people to leave. So where the hell do people go to have a roof over their head and start to put their lives back together? And it did happen. After the 2014 War, one of the biggest things that had to happen was clearing unexploded ordnance. About 15% or so of ordnance does not explode. So all over the Gaza Strip, you have the danger of stuff exploding. That all has to be cleared. That takes months and months and months. So, you know, these theoretical debates are really important and really interesting, but I think they're always trumped by the practicalities on the ground.

Melissa Fundira

Well, Chris, what leverage do aid agencies like UNRWA have to even shift so that they can better address these very urgent needs on the ground right now, and also pivot towards a transition towards a political response that could lead to Palestinian self-determination? Do agencies have any wiggle room here at all?

Chris Gunness

I mean, there is some, in that, first of all, the Commissioner General of UNRWA will go and address the Security Council and the General Assembly and talk to the Secretary-General and the political players and make the point that there has to be a pivot, as you put it, towards another agenda. A political agenda, which sees this humanitarian work become irrelevant. But the fact is that until Israel and America decide that they are prepared to look at the whole question of Palestinian statehood, of allowing the Palestinians the dignity of living peacefully in a state where their rights are fully respected, until we arrive at that point, frankly, any aid agency – UNRWA or anybody else – has pretty much no leverage whatsoever.

Melissa Fundira

And what are the chances of that happening? Specifically for the US to exercise its leverage.

Chris Gunness

Heba was talking about the discussion around our family dinner table. One of the things – the sort of rare and impossible hopes – I cling to, is that events of the last week have been so utterly terrible and traumatic for everybody. And when it becomes clear that Hamas cannot be militarily defeated, the wider question dawns, which is that there is no military solution in the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

Whether people want to stare the truth in the face and admit it or not, one of those truths that perhaps will dare not speak its name, is that there can only be a political solution to the dispute, the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But frankly, with this right-wing, fascistic administration, pro settlement administration in Israel, with ministers talking about dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, with the [Israeli] Defence Minister [Yoav Gallant] talking about animals, and with the [Israeli] President [Isaac Herzog] himself saying there's no distinction between Hamas and ordinary people, it seems that that discussion is going to be a long, long way away. 

But whenever it happens, I have no doubt that that is the only discussion that will ever lead to a long-term solution. And as I say, there is no military solution, there is only a political solution, and that has to address the underlying cause of the conflict: the dispossession of Palestinians in 1948; the occupation, which began in 1967; and the blockade of Gaza that began in 2007.

Heba Aly 

But coming back to the aid sector, if the likelihood of a political solution is as unlikely as you've laid out, Chris, in the meantime, and coming back to you, Yara, what should aid organisations do? That piece you wrote for us was around ‘How do we fix this failed aid to Palestinians? ‘So what's the answer to that? What's the alternative for humanitarians, that as you both said, find themselves in this very difficult situation. What is a better model of aid moving forward?

Yara Asi

Well, I will first start with a broader question of: who is the largest recipient of American aid? It's Israel. America gives Israel almost $4 billion a year in military aid, the same military aid that we're now seeing used to destroy Gaza. So if we want to talk about how aid can be used to improve things, I think the United States, if it really wants to be a – well I think the facade of neutrality has faded at this point – but if it really wants to make a benefit, then it should reconsider sending Israel $4 billion in weapons every year and then calling it aid. 

In the piece, I look at three suggestions. First is – and I think Chris mentioned that he had tried to do this in UNRWA and got some pushback – but agencies need to leverage international humanitarian law and norms when Israel blocks, impedes, or destroys their programming or infrastructure. Chris, you probably have countless stories of European- [and] American-funded greenhouses and clinics and this and that in the Gaza Strip that are then bombed by Israel. And there is no compensation, there's no punishment. It's just ‘Well, I guess that facility is now gone’. So Israel constantly justifies all of its attacks as necessary for security, and I think aid agencies have a role to play in challenging these calls and questions. And Israel has no issue smearing aid agencies and its workers like UNRWA, as simply Hamas terrorists, terrorist sympathisers, et cetera. And I think aid agencies, especially ones with an international presence, need to push back very strongly and demand reparations from Israel when their infrastructure is demolished. 

Going along with that, these agencies really must be completely clear-eyed about the conditions in which they work. This is not just like working in a post-earthquake situation, or even in many other areas of warfare. This is a very unique and completely human made disaster. And I think, not just agencies, but the donors are often unwilling to acknowledge these facts. Again, they want to look at endgame: how many vaccines were distributed? Hhow many beds did we add to this hospital? That's well and good, but give us the why, give us the context. As we've seen in this last month, so much context is missing when talking about Israel, Palestine. And again, I think aid agencies have a legitimacy, especially international ones, that unfortunately Palestinians on the ground are not granted. So can they use their voice and their platform to advocate for those people? 

And lastly, and this is more of a critique of aid more broadly, is that the needs of local people, and in this case Palestinians, should be at the centre of aid. Are there ways that we can support sustainable efforts in a way that allows them to feel that they are partners in aid and not just these helpless victim recipients? And again, I know we have to kind of step back: agencies are funded by donors. So I think a lot of what we're calling for here goes back to the original intentions of donors. And if they're giving money with the intention of silencing this problem and disallowing workers, both local and international workers, from being honest about what they're seeing, that is a significant problem. And then it betrays the entire core of what we see aid as for, which is genuinely helping people. So that would be my recommendations based on my conversations with people on the ground, but I would love to hear what Chris's perspective is.

Chris Gunness

Look, several things. I think hearing you talk about compensation, it’s interesting. In 2014, I believe it was,  Israel actually did pay UNRWA $10.4 million, which wasn't very much. And the deal with Israel was, ‘We’ll pay this money, but just don't rub our faces in it, and don't ask for more’. And that's, I'm afraid, what happened.

On the question of accountability, UNRWA has 13,000 staff in Gaza. Admittedly, they've all been withdrawn to the south, but UNRWA is the daily witness – and I use the witness legal sense – to the most appalling in ustices. And there is absolutely no reason why this should not be seen as prima facie evidence in war crimes procedures that could take place at the ICC. Palestine has accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC. There is absolutely no reason why Karim Khan, the British prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, should not order an investigation. In other circumstances, as with Russia, they ordered arrest warrants. There is absolutely no reason why UNRWA staff and refugees who have been witness to these criminal acts should not be part of an accountability mechanism, because UNRWA has a huge presence on the ground that's hour-by-hour witnessing these appalling crimes. 

Heba Aly

But sorry, on this one, Chris, you're suggesting that that's how aid workers can navigate this conflict differently moving forward? To play a role in that accountability?

Chris Gunness

Yeah, I mean, of course, there are going to be huge problems. I mean, the Americans will turn around and say, ‘Well, if you push for that, you're not going to get a single penny from us’. There’ll be calls from Israel or America to defund UNRWA. That will be immediate. The Commissioner General will be having to choose between food or justice. Hey, that's really what this debate is about. But moving forward, there's absolutely no reason why UNRWA couldn’t at least gather the evidence, send in people who are experts in taking down criminal evidence of war crimes, and keeping it somewhere. And if Karim Khan ever decided that there would be an ICC investigation, that could simply be handed over. UNRWA staff could go to The Hague and give evidence. So there's that, there's the war crimes accountability. 

There’s accountability for the collective punishment of Gaza. When I was in UNRWA, I had in my inbox, email exchanges between UNRWA and COGAT, the Israeli army department that was responsible for imposing the blockade. The blockade is a collective punishment. It is a war crime. And UNRWA knows exactly – as to other people in the UN system – the names, addresses, and ranks of those who are imposing this illegal collective punishment. Why should that not be evidence that's handed over to the state parties to the Geneva Convention? There are various international fora that could be used. For example, the Genocide Convention. If you read the Genocide Convention, there are the list of crimes, such as deliberate killings. Well, you know, 10,000 people have been killed. I'm not saying they were all deliberately killed, but you could make a very plausible argument as the UN Human Rights Office is saying increasingly, that war crimes are being committed. So there's deliberate killings. Mass forcible transfer is another one of the crimes listed in the Genocide Convention. Well, look at Gaza today: over a million people have been forcibly transferred from the north, or are certainly fleeing their houses. The great thing about the Genocide Convention is it makes it's an obligation on all 150 signatory parties, the state parties to prevent genocide. So you don't even have to get debate about ‘Is genocide happening?’ There is an obligation on those who signed the Genocide Convention to prevent it happening. 

And by the way, the aid agencies on the ground are bearing witness to either you call it genocide or potential genocide. But the fact is genocidal things are going on, and aid agencies are bearing hourly witness to that. So those are some ideas of where I think the aid organisations could get involved in accountability.  How public they want to be, of course, it's a tactical question, because Israel will make a big fuss. But the fact is, they could be doing this work if they wanted to. So those could perhaps be built on moving forward. 

But the final thing I want to say is that without a meaningful political framework, humanitarian aid is frankly chucking money into a bottomless pit. And I think we need somehow to get away from that. And the way you get away from that is, goodness knows how, you have a political framework where it begins with something modest, I don't know. But all I can say, is this whole aid debate, without a political framework, humanitarian aid is a waste of money long term.

Melissa Fundira

A recurring theme throughout both of your proposals for how aid should pivot, including being sober about the fact that it has to happen within a plan that involves transition to self-determination, is that aid agencies need to be more vocal, they need to push back, they need to question the narratives that Israel puts out. And they, for example as you just mentioned Chris, need to be prepared to provide evidence to the International Criminal Court. I mean, a lot of these things, I would argue, Chris, you did in your time as spokesperson at UNRWA. And because of that you were accused of being anti-Israeli, you were accused of putting the UN's neutrality in jeopardy. So are these proposals potentially a risk for aid agencies – a risk in that they may not be able to provide aid at all if they’re too outspoken, because the funding is so tied to geopolitical relations? And the biggest funders are very politically aligned with Israel. So do you risk losing aid altogether here? 

Chris Gunness

Well, until you've tried it, you don't know. Right? So the answer is :maybe. But until you've actually tried it – and perhaps you should try under the radar to start with – you will never know. But there simply isn't the courage, I don't think, in the UN system to do that today. And I think it's only a risk if you make it a risk. And you can reduce the risk by gathering evidence and doing all this stuff without everyone knowing and being very strategic about how it's used. So UNRWA could be gathering this information and could be passing it on entirely invisibly to the ICC prosecutor's office. There are ways of minimising the risk. But as I said, you know, I did take risks in terms of public advocacy. I wept openly on Al Jazeera, because the things that were going on were beyond words. And I did speak openly about war crimes. And I did speak openly about collective punishment, about violations of the Geneva Convention, all of that stuff. But I think that UNRWA spokespeople could be much more robust today in speaking out about these more political issues. But as I say, on the question of accountability, until aid agencies like UNRWA are actually prepared to try it, it's impossible to say how big the risks are.

Yara Asi  

From the outside, I think what's eternally frustrating about this is that we hear through memoirs, through anonymous reports, through interviews after retirement, that everyone does know what's happening here. If they talk to you behind the scenes, former presidential aides will come out and say, ‘Oh, yes, the President knows, the Prime Minister knows, everybody knows’. And yet, they don't want to become a target. They know that this is a very robust mechanism against anyone who criticises Israel, and so they don't. 

And so I think what we really need to see in the leadership of aid agencies, and the leadership of countries –  we're starting to see this more with the leadership of like the UN and the World Health Organization, but of course they're at the mercy of their member states – is we need to see some moral courage to call things what they are, not gaslight billions of people who are looking at images with their own eyes, reading figures. Be realistic that a military defeat of Hamas is not possible unless you truly do drop a nuke on the Gaza Strip – and even then Hamas, it's a political movement and it does not account for what we're seeing in the West Bank, doubling of detentions of Palestinians and Israeli jails, unprecedented raids. There was an airstrike in Jenin refugee camp a few weeks ago. This is run by the [Palestinian Authority]. These are supposedly the guys the West likes. So I would really like to see some moral courage from these leaders. Show half – show a quarter – of the courage that the workers in Gaza are showing, the doctors in Gaza, the mothers in Gaza. I'm so tired of hearing these excuses from the most powerful people in the world about how they just can't do anything about this. I just think after this that can no longer be a tenable position.

Heba Aly

I think that's as good a place as any to end. A clear call there for moral courage, both from political leaders, but also from agencies. Though I must say, I certainly don't envy the position they’e in having to choose between that moral courage and the risk that aid gets cut off altogether. Though knowing, as both of you have said, that the only really sustainable way out of this is outside of the humanitarian sphere all together. Yara, Chris, thank you both for taking the time to talk to us today.

Chris Gunness

Thanks to all of you. It's a real pleasure and a joy to be part of the chat. Thank you very much.

Yara Asi

Yes. Thank you for having us. Chris, it was a pleasure to meet you.

Chris Gunness

And you, Yara.

Heba Aly

Yara Asi is  the co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, a partnership between Harvard University and Birzeit University, and a US Fulbright scholar to the West Bank. Chris Gunness is the former spokesperson of UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. He spoke to us today in an independent capacity.

Melissa Fundira

Today, we leave you with thoughts from Maha Hussaini, Gaza correspondent for the Middle East Eye. In this emotional war diary, Hussaini describes the dire humanitarian situation and constant bombardment  happening in Gaza, how the concept of home is becoming a distant memory, and how Gazans wake up everyday believing it may be their last. Hussaini is one of the many brave journalists reporting from Gaza. You can see some of that reporting in photo essays and articles on our website: thenewhumanitarian.org

Heba Aly

This podcast is a production of The New Humanitarian. This episode was hosted by me, Heba Aly, and Melissa Fundira. Melissa also produced and edited the episode. Original music by Whitney Patterson, and sound engineering by Mark Nieto. 

Melissa Fundira

Thank you for listening to Rethinking Humanitarianism. 

Maha Hussaini, Middle East Eye: “So it's been around a month now since we have left our home. I'm not sure, actually, if my home was severely damaged or totally destroyed. My apartment is located in one of residential the residential buildings surrounding the al-Quds Hospital that has been threatened several time with bombing, and my neighbourhood itself was carpet bombed several times and is still being bombed every single hour. I'm not sure until when this will actually last. As I said, we're actually waking up every day thinking that this might be our last day. And I always, actually, say and tell my family and the people around me here that the concept of home, the meaning of home, the feeling of home is even becoming a distant memory for me. I cannot remember the last time I was home feeling safe without hearing bombing everywhere. I cannot remember the last time I drank water without… as much water as I needed. I cannot remember the last time I ate what I wanted and what I wished for. All what we eat now is just food to stay alive. I'm thinking all the time what we will be eating the next day, or if I will be able to provide food for my family. It's not about money, of course. We have money, but money is becoming useless here in Gaza.”