(Below are Marilyn’s remarks to the rally outside MFAT today, January 22. Please put them to good use! There’s still time to write to Foreign Minister Winston Peters. Use your own arguments or cite any of the points below. Write to W.Peters@ministers.govt.nz today. Again tomorrow. And then again the next day.)
The Israeli government is just days away from dismantling Gaza’s humanitarian system and controlling reconstruction—if it can ban UNRWA. We are here to tell Winston Peters and MFAT to act before that happens.
What is UNRWA in Gaza? They call it para-statal. It has government-like responsibility for Palestine refugees, who are 2/3 of Gaza’s population. UNRWA registers each refugee’s birth, and their rights. UNRWA provides education, health, housing, social welfare, rubbish collection—state responsibilities until there is a Palestinian state able to provide for its citizens. UNRWA does that in our name.
In times of emergency, UNRWA provides for everyone it can reach, refugee or not.
What makes UNRWA indispensable in emergencies? UNRWA is Gaza’s largest employer, owning by far the most extensive network of trucks, warehouses, shelters and food distribution centres. But UNRWA is not essential because it owns trucks. Israel says those can be given to NGOs to do the work. No, UNRWA owns the trucks because UNRWA has been built on the knowledge that anchors Gaza’s humanitarian operations. UNRWA is made to get goods through a blockade which is designed to keep goods out. UNRWA’s distribution points are the places where food reaches neighbourhoods.
Israel is claiming that donors can somehow contract, hire, procure, deliver, navigate that deadly blockade and distribute food to every neighbourhood in a manmade famine, without communications or buildings or neighbourhood standing. That is a formula for ongoing genocide; nothing less. States like ours must refuse to let more people die avoidably.
Israel also wants to erase UNRWA’s mandate. UN states assigned UNRWA to serve Palestinians as members of a single nation, and to persist until their rights are fulfilled. Now, Palestinians know, you and I know that Palestine refugees are members of one nation. UNRWA is the United Nations’ demonstration of the world’s commitment to a real political solution. Donors to UNRWA are recognising political cause and political solutions.
NGOs can’t do that. They will assist Palestinians as de-politicised individuals needing humanitarian goods. NGOs sign time-limited contracts to provide X to location Y.
On December 9 Israel introduced new regulations for NGOs, requiring them to comply with Israel’s defense and policy interests. Israel will refuse or de-register organisations which, for example, deny that Israel is democratic or call for boycotts. They will deregister any organisation whose staff, local Palestinian partners or board members have used that language within the past seven years!
This regulation is already in place. If you feel critical of NGO language, Israel’s limitations are part of the explanation. Israel is trying to regulate the end of advocacy and human rights work in occupied Palestine. Our government did not object. Investigators for the International Criminal Court—do you think they’re getting into Gaza?
Israel is bound by law to facilitate humanitarian aid to the people of occupied Gaza. It is not up to Israel to control, to buy and sell access, survival, shelter or advocacy for Palestinians. States sign agreements when they join the United Nations. Will Aotearoa sit quietly while Israel shreds those agreements?
Ceasefires in Gaza have never been more than suspensions of violence. Within a few weeks of the suspension of bombing in 2014, Gazan Palestinians were protesting at UNRWA’s gates. They protested the donor states’ slow response to the enormous task of reconstruction
Where else should they go to speak to us? We have no embassy in Gaza. UNRWA is the face of states’ obligations to Gaza behind an illegal blockade. Gazan Palestinians live at the sharpest edge of Palestinian suffering, and UNRWA is proof that our government has not forgotten. UNRWA’s services and lifesaving supplies are delivered in our name.
Governments had the power and failed to use it to stop 470 days of genocide. It is unthinkable that we, our governments, will let Israel erase the proof of our obligations now, after 15 months of this apocalyptic nightmare.
If UNRWA is banned: food, water, fuel, medicines; all the immediate essentials of survival will not arrive as they could arrive to relieve a shocked, starving, grieving, homeless, cold community. It’s that simple.
If this ceasefire takes hold and lays bare the extent of Israel’s devastation, Gaza can think about living and rebuilding while they pursue their political and human rights.
UNRWA is essential to reconstruction. It’s the middle of winter. 90% of Gaza’s homes are ruined and 90% of its people need warm shelter. Half of Gaza’s trees and agricultural land are wrecked. 2/3 of its water resevoirs are gone. Universities, hospitals—gone. 95% of its schools have been blown up and children have had their eductions disrupted. 40m tons of debris need to be sifted for the bodies of the missing and for explosives. UNRWA anchors each of those tasks.
Reportedly Israel will permit a private Egyption company to bring in reconstruction materials. Remember the exit visas they privatised—$5000 US to get through the Rafah gates. What will they charge for concrete, and who will get it first? That is Israel’s vision, if we sit back and let Israel contract out and control reconstruction. UNRWA prioritises refugee needs; Egyptian companies do not.
Israel will also take over UNRWA’s headquarters and facilities in occupied East Jerusalem. Already, mobs have set fire to the perimeter of the buildings repeatedly, while people were inside. Reportedly, Israeli authorities will seize the buildings, hand them over to settlers, and instantly establish one more illegal settlement in occupied East Jerusalem. Palestinian students will be transferred from UNRWA to Israeli schools, in defiance of the rights of an occupied people.
The ICJ has ruled that the occupation is illegal and we must bring it to an end. Instead, Israel will unilaterally push the UN out of occupied East Jerusalem. Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem will become one more fact on the ground. And East Jerusalem contains Al Aqsa Mosque. Israel’s intended actions have massive implications.
UNRWA is our face in Gaza. We must not withdraw, we must not let Israel dictate Gaza’s survival and its prospects. After 76 years of illegal occupation, after 17 years of illegal blockade, and 470 days of genocidal violence, after all the words our politicians have said, we need action this week.
Winston Peters, MFAT, you failed to act on genocide. You must not fail in our names again.
Marilyn Garson,
for Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa
Sh'ma Koleinu - Alternative Jewish Voices (NZ) 