Last week, the government of Canada quietly announced it would discontinue its long-standing financial contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and redirect the monies to strengthen the judicial system of the Palestinian Authority and other food assistance programs. The news came out as UNRWA launched a special fundraising campaign to collect millions of dollars needed to support programs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
UNRWA provides assistance to 4.67 million Palestinian refugees scattered throughout the Middle East and administers programs in the areas of education, health and other social services in 59 Palestinian refugee camps. The agency operates solely through donations from various organizations and governments. It is currently under severe financial duress due to the increasing number of Palestinian refugees, the deterioration of their socio-economic level, unemployment and food insecurity.
“Canada’s decision to cut funds to UNRWA and its essential programs is very worrying and could have important consequences for Palestinian refugees,” stated Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME. “Reducing the capacity of UNRWA will terribly undermine the quality of life for these people. Canadians must respond to this announcement and protest against this radical break from traditional Canadian values of compassion and humanitarian concerns,” added Woodley.
Canada is the seventh largest donor to UNRWA and contributes on average 15 million dollars annually via the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which is currently overseen by the Minister of International Cooperation Beverley Oda. Several groups believe that the decision of the Canadian authorities to stop its support for UNRWA is more than just a desire to reallocate the money more effectively. It could reflect an intention to have the UN agency completely disappear. “There are groups who seem to think that if UNRWA were de-funded and disappeared, the refugees would disappear too. This is a deluded fiction,” said UNRWA spokesman, Chris Gunness.
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is a non-profit and secular organization bringing together men and women of all backgrounds who labour to see justice and peace take root again in the Middle East. Its mission is to empower decision-makers to view all sides with fairness and to promote the equitable and sustainable development of the region.
The United Nations independent expert on Palestinian rights has again called for a threat of economic sanctions against Israel to force it to lift its blockade of Gaza, which is preventing the return to a normal life for 1.5 million residents after the devastating Israeli offensive a year ago.
“Obviously Israel does not respond to language of diplomacy, which has encouraged the lifting of the blockade and so what I am suggesting is that it has to be reinforced by a threat of adverse economic consequences for Israel,” Richard Falk, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, told UN Radio.
“That probably is something that is politically unlikely to happen, but unless it happens, it really does suggest that the United States and the Quartet and the EU [European Union] don’t take these calls for lifting the blockade very seriously and are unaffected by Israel’s continuing defiance of those calls,” he said, referring to the diplomatic Quartet of the UN, EU, Russia and US, which have been calling for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the main UN body tending to the needs of some 4 million Palestinian refugees, said today Gaza had been “bombed back, not to the Stone Age, but to the mud age,” because UNRWA was reduced to building houses out of mud after the 22-day offensive Israel said it launched to end rocket attacks against it.
“The Israeli blockade has meant that almost no reconstruction materials have been allowed to move into Gaza even though 60,000 homes were either damaged or completely destroyed. So we in UNRWA have been saying ‘let’s lift this senseless blockage,’” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told UN Radio.
“We are the United Nations and we always hope that diplomacy will prevail, and it will prevail above the rationale of warfare. But if you look at what is going on in Gaza, and if you look at the continued blockade and the fact that that blockade is radicalizing a population there, then one has to have one’s doubts.”
In a statement last week, Mr. Falk stressed that the “unlawful blockade” was in its third year, with insufficient food and medicine reaching Gazans, producing further deterioration of the mental and physical health of the entire civilian population.
Building materials necessary to repair the damage could not enter Gaza, and he blamed the blockade for continued breakdowns of the electricity and sanitation systems due to the Israeli refusal to let spare parts needed for repair get through the crossings.
Mr. Falk also deplored the wall being built on the borders between Gaza and Egypt.
“I’m very distressed by that, because it is both an expression of complicity on the part of the government of Egypt and the United States, which apparently is assisting through its corps of engineers with the construction of this underground steel impenetrable wall that’s designed to interfere with the tunnels that have been bringing some food and material relief to the Gaza population,” he told UN Radio.
“And of course, the underground tunnel complex itself is an expression of the desperation created in Gaza as a result of this blockade that’s going on now for two and a half years, something that no people since the end of World War II have experienced in such a severe and continuing form.”
As a Special Rapporteur, Mr. Falk serves in an independent and unpaid capacity and reports to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.
In a new policy brief, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), entrusted with promoting the integration of developing countries into the world economy, reported that more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s population are now impoverished; 43 per cent unemployed; and 75 per cent lack food security. “In view of the eroded productive base, poverty is likely to widen and deepen unless reconstruction begins in earnest and without further delay,” it warned.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd with Refka al-Kurd
Israeli police ordered outgoing UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd to leave an East Jerusalem home on Thursday during her last official visit as the head of the relief agency.
Ma’an’s reporter on the scene said AbuZayd left after police gave her five minutes to evacuate the premises of the house of the Al-Kurd family, as a Palestinian woman yelled “We want our homes and our lands. We have no alternative.”
Amidst Israeli police and soldiers, AbuZayd visited Palestinians recently evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem on International Human Rights Day. She spoke of Jerusalem as a “City of Dispossession,”
“On this day, and in this place, I wish to remind the international community of the unfinished business in Sheikh Jarrah and elsewhere in the West Bank,” she said.
“The dispossessed, the displaced must see their losses acknowledged, their injustices addressed,” she added. “Peace is possible, but only if we insist on our universal humanity.”
Members of the Al-Kurd family, who are fighting a court battle to keep their home from being taken over by Israeli settlers, told her, “What are we to do? International Law should have helped us.” As she spoke, settler watched nearby.
During a news conference before entering the Al-Kurd house, AbuZayd said, “As a colleague of mine said, we have ‘failed with distinction’ … I am leaving reluctantly, at a time of greater political uncertainty than at any time I’ve been here in nine years and at a greater time of economic and financial difficulties.”
“While the international community is committed to the goal of establishing two states, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, it is difficult to imagine how that outcome can be achieved in light of the systematic settlement activity and violations of basic human rights currently afflicting the Palestinian community in East Jerusalem.
“The impact of this urban settlement activity being conducted with seeming impunity is manifold and acute,” AbuZayd continued. “The intimate juxtaposition of two cultures, such as exists in the building behind me, with its accompanying violence and tension, destroyed the communal atmosphere that has evolved over decades.”
UN condemnation of forced evictions
AbuZayd reaffirmed the UN’s condemnation of the ongoing Israeli policy of forced evictions of Palestinians and house demolitions. “The UN rejects Israel’s claims that these cases are a matter for municipal authorities and domestic courts. Such acts are in violation of Israel’s obligations under international law.”
“To date, four of the 28 families have lost their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, affecting over 55 people including 20 children. At present, a further eight families are under direct threat of forced eviction, having been served with orders to vacate their homes, potentialy affected another 120 people. In all incidents to date, settlers have taken over with the active protection and assistance of the Israeli authorities. But the numbers don’t speak to the human suffering and trauma that has been the unfortunate hallmark of these forced evictions.”
Plight of the Bedouin
During her final speech in Sheikh Jarrah, AbuZayd took the opportunity to speak of the ongoing displacement of the Bedouin across the West Bank. “On International Human Right day, I would also like to highlight the plight of one of the most disadvantaged groups in this region, the bedouins of the West Bank.”
“As the occupying power, Israel remains responsible for ensuring that the basic needs of the occupied population are met. But many refugee Bedouin and herding communities, originally displaced from their traditional lands in 1948, are now experiencing multiple counts of displacement from area C as they are forcibly moved from their homes.”
“These groups are now sinking deeper into food insecurity and abject poverty, as grazing land continues to shrink and access to natural resources is severely restricted by the occupying power. Administrative demolition, forced evictions, collapsing livelihoods, poverty and settler harassment represent the key triggers to displacement for area C herding communities today and they’re already stretched coping mechanism are now reaching their limits. They’re full rights must be respected as a matter of utmost urgency.”
Human Rights Day
“It is … fitting that on my last official visit to Jerusalem as UNRWA Commissioner General, and on International Human Rights Day, I should come to the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of the city, where the failure of the international community to fulfill the promises of the Universal Declaration is so acutely felt and where the pain and ugliness of dispossession and occupation are so tragically in evidence.”
Israeli army soldiers were also on the scene, the reporter added. The forces also dispersed journalists from the area. AbuZayd had the brief opportunity to speak with Maher Ghawi, another Jerusalemite affected by Israel’s forced eviction policy.
Full text of Karen AbuZayd’s speech can be found here.
Sixty years after the UN moved to address the fate of the dispossessed, we need to accept that the injustice endures
Sixty years ago today the United Nations general assembly voted into existence a temporary body known as UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA’s task was to deal with the humanitarian consequences of the dispossession of some three-quarters of a million Palestine refugees forced by the 1948 Middle East war to abandon their homes and flee their ancestral lands. Just two decades later, the six-day war generated another spasm of violence and forced displacement, culminating in the occupation of Palestinian territory. Today, anguished exile remains the lot of Palestinians and Palestine refugees. The occupation of Palestinian land persists, there is no Palestinian state, and the human rights and fundamental freedoms to which Palestinians are entitled under international law do not exist.
The occupation, now over 40 years old, becomes more entrenched with every infringement of human rights and international law in the occupied Palestinian territory. Political actors hold in their hands the power to redress the travesties Palestinians endure. Yet the approach has been, at best, to equivocate over the minutiae of the occupation – a checkpoint here, a bag of cement there – or, at worst, to look the other way, to acquiesce in or even support the measures causing Palestinian suffering.
From my perspective as the head of the agency mandated to assist and protect Palestine refugees, it is particularly vexing that the prevailing approach fails – or refuses – to accord the refugee issue the attention it deserves. Over 60 years, dispossession has faded from the focus of peace efforts. The heart of where peace should begin is absent from the international agenda, pushed aside as one of the “final status” issues, one which belongs to a later stage of the negotiation process. As forced displacements continue across the West Bank, as Palestinians are evicted from their homes in East Jersualem, I ask a simple question: is it not time for those engaged in the peace process to muster the will and the courage to address the Palestine refugee question?
On this regrettable 60th anniversary of the agency which I shall leave in less than one month, I wish to refocus the debate on the displaced and dispossessed, to put the refugees at the centre of peacemaking efforts.
Make no mistake, not a single conflict of contemporary times has been resolved, no durable peace achieved, unless and until the voices of the victims of those conflicts were heard, their losses acknowledged and redress found to injustices they experience. The precedents of recent peacemaking efforts and the methodology of contemporary conflict resolution affirm that giving high priority to resolving dispossession and the plight of refugees is a necessity, an international obligation and a humanitarian imperative.
The Israeli-Palestinian confrontation is uniquely complex. Among its myriad dimensions, all of which require attention, the unresolved refugee issue is one of those most profoundly linked to the uncertainties of the regional situation and to the persistence of the conflict. Addressing it is, therefore, a sine qua non for making progress towards a negotiated solution.
Failing to engage with the refugee issue and consciously shunting it to one side has served only to disavow the refugees’ significance as a constituency with a prominent stake in delivering and sustaining peace. This has left many with a dangerous cynicism about the peace process, thus strengthening the hands of those who argue against peace itself.
I refuse, however, to conclude my time in office on a pessimistic note. Instead I urge that we take steps to engage the marginalised. Let us confound the cynics. Let us create alternative realities to disarm those who favour violence. I call on the peacemakers to acknowledge, in their rhetoric and their policies, the need to address Palestinian dispossession.
Let symbolism and rhetoric give way to substance. On the anniversary of UNRWA, I call on the international community and the parties to the conflict to acknowledge the 60-year-old injustice as a first step towards addressing the consequences of that injustice. Let us build facts in the mind to create facts of a just and durable peace on the ground.
Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza
Summary
This report documents Israel’s extensive use of white phosphorus munitions during its 22-day military operations in Gaza, from December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009, named Operation Cast Lead. Based on in-depth investigations in Gaza, the report concludes that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) repeatedly exploded white phosphorus munitions in the air over populated areas, killing and injuring civilians, and damaging civilian structures, including a school, a market, a humanitarian aid warehouse and a hospital.
White phosphorus munitions did not kill the most civilians in Gaza – many more died from missiles, bombs, heavy artillery, tank shells, and small arms fire – but their use in densely populated neighborhoods, including downtown Gaza City, violated international humanitarian law (the laws of war), which requires taking all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm and prohibits indiscriminate attacks.
The unlawful use of white phosphorus was neither incidental nor accidental. It was repeated over time and in different locations, with the IDF “air-bursting” the munition in populated areas up to the last days of its military operation. Even if intended as an obscurant rather than as a weapon, the IDF’s repeated firing of air-burst white phosphorus shells from 155mm artillery into densely populated areas was indiscriminate and indicates the commission of war crimes.
The dangers posed by white phosphorus to civilians were well-known to Israeli commanders, who have used the munition for many years. According to a medical report prepared during the hostilities by the ministry of health, “[w]hite phosphorus can cause serious injury and death when it comes into contact with the skin, is inhaled or is swallowed.” The report states that burns on less than 10 percent of the body can be fatal because of damage to the liver, kidneys and heart.
When it wanted an obscurant for its forces, the IDF had a readily available and non-lethal alternative to white phosphorus-smoke shells produced by an Israeli company. The IDF could have used those shells to the same effect and dramatically reduced the harm to civilians.
Using white phosphorus in densely populated areas as a weapon is even more problematic. Human Rights Watch found no evidence that Israeli forces fired ground-burst white phosphorous at hardened military targets, such as Palestinian fighters in bunkers, but it may have air-burst white phosphorous for its incendiary effect. Fired from artillery and air-burst to maximize the area of impact, white phosphorous munitions will not have the same lethal effect as high-explosive shells, but will be just as indiscriminate.
The IDF’s deliberate or reckless use of white phosphorus munitions is evidenced in five ways. First, to Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, the IDF never used its white phosphorus munitions in Gaza before, despite numerous incursions with personnel and armor. Second, the repeated use of air-burst white phosphorus in populated areas until the last days of the operation reveals a pattern or policy of conduct rather than incidental or accidental usage. Third, the IDF was well aware of the effects white phosphorus has and the dangers it can pose to civilians. Fourth, if the IDF used white phosphorus as an obscurant, it failed to use available alternatives, namely smoke munitions, which would have held similar tactical advantages without endangering the civilian population. Fifth, in one of the cases documented in this report – the January 15 strike on the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) headquarters in Gaza City – the IDF kept firing white phosphorus despite repeated warnings from UN personnel about the danger to civilians. Under international humanitarian law, these circumstances demand the independent investigation of the use of white phosphorus and, if warranted, the prosecution of all those responsible for war crimes.
The IDF at first denied using white phosphorus in Gaza, and then said it was using all weapons in compliance with international law. It now says it is conducting an investigation, reportedly run by a colonel, into the use of white phosphorus. Given the IDF’s record on previous internal investigations, and the relatively low rank of the reported investigation leader, the inquiry’s objectivity remains in doubt.
