UN's Top Gaza Official: "Israel Creating Generation of People Nourished on Despair"

John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, spoke to Haaretz before returning to Britain after 3 1/2 years in office.

Question: In a previous interview with you more than a year ago, you suggested that Israel shake off the delusion that pressure on the Gaza Strip would lead to Hamas' downfall. In your visit to Gaza this week, did you have the impression that the blockade was weakening Hamas?

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Holmes: I don't think my voice alone would have changed Israeli policy. It is hard to be sure what exactly the objective of this policy is. Of the blockade, the siege, the collective punishment. It is hard to see that it has been achieved, because Hamas is still there, firmly in control. Meanwhile, the condition of the people there [in Gaza] remains grim.


Q: How grim?

Holmes: It depends on how you look at it. People are not starving in Gaza. There are plenty of goods available, some coming in through legitimate crossing points but mainly through the tunnels. While it relieves the pressure in a sense, it isn't good at all, because all it really does is encourage a smuggler-gangster economy, which incidentally benefits Hamas financially.

The smuggler-gangster economy is undermining some of the best legitimate forces in Gaza's civil society, which do exist, whatever people might think. It is therefore not in anyone's interest, certainly not in Israel's. So I think this policy continues to be ineffective and indeed counterproductive.

What the policy of the blockade is doing is not encouraging the forces you want to encourage. Gaza is not a nest of terrorists. For the most part there are people who just want to live ordinary lives, and they are being undermined by what's happening. So you are in danger of creating a generation of people who are nourished on despair.

Q: Do you agree with Israel's claim that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza?

Holmes: Even though there are plenty of goods available in Gaza, and that people should be able to get them, the problem is of course that most people have no money. Eighty percent of the people in Gaza are essentially dependent on outside food aid, either from UNWRA or the World Food Program. Not because there isn't food in the shops - there is - but they can't afford it, or they can't afford enough of it because any livelihoods that there were, any jobs that there were outside the government have effectively disappeared. Most private businesses have been destroyed, essentially by the blockade - bulldozed - and the rest finished off by Cast Lead.

Other than the people that work for Hamas, or are paid by the PA, there is no income, so people are forced to live on handouts.

Q: What do you think will happen after Egypt completes its wall and closes the tunnels? How do you see Gaza's future?

Holmes: If Egypt did complete the wall and effectively block all the tunnels, the amount of goods going in across the crossing points - if it remained at the current level - would be completely unsustainable.

The trouble is that most of the avenues that could lead to change are blocked.

If Gilad Shalit was released, although the link between his fate and the fate of 1.5 million people is not a reasonable one, that might at least lead to some improvement. It is unclear how great that improvement would be, but let's hope so. But that negotiation seems to have run into a dead end, and negotiations between Hamas and Fatah seem to be stuck, so it is hard to see how it can get any better.

Q: I assume you've warned the Israeli authorities of the political implications. What response do you get from them?

Holmes: The answer is A., Gilad Shalit, and B., we don't want to do anything that would benefit Hamas, or from which they would get credit, and C., we're not aiming to hurt ordinary Gazans. But they are being hurt.

Israel has certain responsibilities as to the siege in Gaza. Israel, as we see it, continues to be the occupying power. And it is not fulfilling those responsibilities as we believe it should.

The basic medical position [in Gaza] is not unreasonable, but there is a wider point which is not just about Gaza, but about the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where barriers, checkpoints and restricted movement means that access for many people to basic medical services is getting more and more difficult. The staff of hospitals in East Jerusalem can't get to work, and the patients can't get there either.

This is only one illustration of a much bigger problem of how restrictions of movement and difficulties of access to basic services is being cut off, and people can't do the things they used to be able to do.

Q: Your division is responsible for many distressed areas worldwide. Why do you devote so much energy to this small place?

Holmes: It is a small geographical area but also a very focused problem with very significant humanitarian problems - people facing eviction after living in one place for 60 years, because of settler pressure; the Bedouins in Area C increasingly being squeezed from all directions and finding it very difficult to survive.

But there are many more long-running problems, and every time I come back I don't find that things have improved. By and large the facts on the ground continue to go against the kind of settlement that everyone wants to see, which is the two-state solution.

Q: What's your advice?

Holmes: I feel depressed when I listen to and see what is going on, because I don't think it's going in the right direction. There is a need on the part of everybody to fully recognize that, but also to look to the long term. Where is this really going to finish off in the longer term, rather than thinking how I can manage the situation for the next six months.

Comments

[Dave]

Why don't the people have money. The Palestinians recieve more international aid than any other group in the world. Where is the money going?

[Bill]

What about Darfur? As much as Israel is to blame for this so are the Arab states that scream in one ear "we want a two state solution" and in the other "the Zionist movement must be pushed into the sea." This says to me that a two state solution is just step to a stronger platform to continue the persecution of Israel till its gone. The whole episode of Gaza clearly demonstrates this. In addition, if you look to the charters of any Islamic movement in the area you will find a clear stance stating that Israel must be destroyed--thus what incentive does Israel have for peace? What real incentive does Israel have if the majority of the Islamic world will always be ideological and at times physically at war with them? Ask yourself what you would do if someone is going to keep punching you despite what you do?

The UN is also quite biased on this issue because the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Commision is clearly controlled by the OIC block. From 1997 to 2006 249 resolutions were passed against Israel while 14 against Sudan. The entire Isreali Arab conflict has claimed 50,000 lives on both sides since 1948 while the conflict in Darfur has claimed 2 million since the early 90's. You do the math and figure out which is the bigger humanitarian issue. Yet despite the obvious evidence the OIC claims a genocide is underway in Palestine and not one in Darfur!!!??? Why? How can the Islamic world protest in the millions for Gaza and not produce even one protest for Darfur were thousands die each month? Selective outrage I say and clearly motivated by the politics of Islamism. Sadly the Palestinians are caught in the middle of this conflict and used as a proxy for the Islamic world to hide their own ills and ultimately destroy Israel. Iran, who does almost nothing beside offer arms and rhetoric, is a prime example of this warped mindset.

Despite all of this the Pals are the largest recipients of aid per capita in the world. To boot it is the enemy, us infidels, who provide over 80% of this aid each year. The most appalling aspect is the fact people are starving the world over while this manufactured political mess is continually fed. Again I say what about Darfur!!!!!???

[Dave]

The Muslim world doesn't even blink at the horrible things that are happening in Iraq. Christians are now fleeing Mosul as I type. Most Christians have left Baghdad and nearly all have left Basra. Any reaction from 'moderate' Muslims? Nope.

[Publicola]

"Most Christians have left Baghdad and nearly all have left Basra. Any reaction from ‘moderate’ Muslims? Nope."

Adherents of any religion [in this case the acolytes of Islam] ought to make themselves urgently familiar with Kant's 'categorical imperative' for pure practical reason, when claiming religious freedom for their respective creed in whatever countries in whatever region on our planet earth:

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

In more familiar terms this maxim is known as the Golden rule [of reciprocity],
an ethical code that states one has a right to just treatment, and a responsibility to ensure justice for others. It is also called the ethic of reciprocity:

"do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you".

Funnily enough there are lots of quotes to be found in Islamic scriptures (Hadith, Quran) demanding exactly that; but for some strange reasons these commands are somehow not properly or generally followed by some/lots of adherents of this creed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule#Islam