What UNRWA could do with $25,000
Ha’aretz, Sunday, September 09, 2001
By Amira Hass
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The UN Relief and Works Agency, set up in 1949 to deal with the `temporary’ problem of the Palestinian refugees, is today more firmly entrenched and more desperately needed than ever before.
Anyone climbing up from Mawasi, the agricultural area west of Khan Yunis, to the archaeological tel on which the city’s refugee camp is built, feels as if he or she has stepped back in time and history, to 1949. Behind the concertina wire of the Israel Defense Forces outposts demarcating Neveh Dekalim from the Palestinian city, a neighborhood of white tents rises out of the sands. Inside the tents are mattresses; here and there a figure is stretched out on one, or squatting next to a tent watching the time go by.
Near the tents are black water tanks labeled “UNRWA.” They are connected to the existing water supply network, and they are what brings the visitor back to the here-and-now: Until April, there were 50-year-old refugee homes here. Crowded, cheek by jowl, built of asbestos panels, tin sheets and cardboard, connected to the water system but not to sewerage. They sank into the sand and overlooked the sea, the Mawasi plantations and the tiled roofs of the settlements.
In October 2000, additional IDF outposts were introduced into the landscape. In April of this year, the bulldozers demolished the homes in order to stop the shooting from them on the IDF outposts and the spacious homes and expansive industrial area of Neveh Dekalim. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) provided the tents and gave each family about $1,000. Many of the residents of the destroyed homes elected to remain near the ruined remains of their few belongings, afraid that if they went with the tents to another place, the Israeli army would move into the area and take it over.
Below the tents, toward the east, are rows of homes still standing, but they are riddled with IDF bullets and crumbling. They are separated by the minaret of the local mosque, which calls the faithful to prayer five times a day. Bombardments, firing or helicopters circling overhead – the muezzin and the worshipers carry on. No force can erode the only consistent foundation in these people’s lives.
Correction: In the Gaza Strip, the UN agency is almost a competitor to the mosques. It was established in December 1949 on the basis of UN Resolution 302, as a temporary body that would provide welfare services to the Palestinian refugees until they could return to their homes in accordance with UN Resolution 194 of December 1948, which established the rights of the refugees and displaced persons to return and receive compensation.
The blue UN flags flying over the 170 or so UNRWA schools and a few dozen local clinics and offices have become as much a trademark of the Gaza Strip as the mosques. In a population of more than 1.1 million people, about 820,000 (according to July 2000 UNRWA figures) are registered as refugees eligible for UN agency services: education, health, sanitation, welfare and professional training. Of these, 450,000 live in eight refugee camps, all of which are smaller than one square kilometer each, with the exception of Jabalya.
When the Oslo Accords were signed, there was an expectation that the temporary UN agency would gradually be absorbed into the permanent arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians. Donor countries began reducing their contributions to UNRWA. All logic said that in any event donations went to the Palestinian Authority, even though refugee representatives said that as long as there was no clear and agreed-upon solution to the refugee problem, UNRWA must continue to function as before. If not, it would be interpreted as an attempt by Israel and the world to evade the refugee question as an international political issue and turn it into an internal Palestinian welfare problem.
UNRWA, with its approximately 7,000 employees – including teachers, doctors, nurses and engineers – continues to operate. Indeed, in the seven years since the Oslo Accords were signed, the agency has suffered from a constant erosion of its budget and a chronic deficit, just when Israel’s closure policy (which began in 1991) led to a gradual rise in poverty rates. It continues to operate today, during a period described as the hardest in 32 years. Reality has proven how much UNRWA is needed in Gaza to keep the strip from exploding due to the overcrowding, poverty, unemployment and the closure.
Acting observers
Most of the UNRWA employees are Palestinian. Both the organization and its staff undergo all the experiences of this bloody heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: shellings, shooting on the roads, injuries, demolitions, blocked roads. A few dozen staffers, mainly on the administrative levels, are foreign nationals. The close acquaintance with the circumstances turns them into de facto international observers who report to the UN institutions, and directly or indirectly also to their own foreign ministries, about events on the ground.
Nine UNRWA employees have been injured by IDF fire or tear gas inhalation in the last year, most of them in the course of their work at school or while evacuating the wounded. According to UNRWA records, between October 3, 2000 and September 2, 2001, IDF soldiers have fired on UNRWA staff on 16 occasions, including eight times on ambulances taking the wounded to hospital. IDF fire caused $12,760 in damages to 17 UNRWA buildings, including 10 schools. Thirteen of the buildings were in the Khan Yunis refugee camps, two in Dir al-Balah and two in Jabalya.
As an organization required to file public financial reports, the situation on the ground is expressed in the numbers. For example, from November 2000 to the end of May 2001, UNRWA lost about $600,000 due to wasted work hours on account of the internal closure in the Gaza Strip and delays at checkpoints. Some 67,857 work hours went down the drain due to full and half days of closure and another 116,503 hours were lost due to checkpoint delays, multiplied by $3.27818 – the cost of one work-hour. With $600,000, UNRWA can, for example, provide 26,100 families with a basket of family food provisions valued at $23, containing 50 kilograms of flour, 5 kg. sugar, 5 kg. rice, 2 liters of milk, 2 kg. milk powder and 5 kg. of lentils.
Due to the loss of sources of income and the unemployment of more than 50 percent of the Gazan work-force over the last year, UNRWA has expanded its basic food provision services. In recent years it distributed food to 16,000 of the poorest families in the Strip; between January and June of this year, it handed out a basket of staple groceries to about 127,000 families – about 70 percent of the population of the Strip. Food distribution has become the most important project in coping with the hardships of the intifada. Neither the PA nor any Islamic organization has aided as many needy people.
Like all Palestinians, the UNRWA teams also look for alternative routes when the main roads are blocked. Travel on unpaved side roads causes damage to vehicles, although when compared to the cost of lost work time, the economic damage is moderate: only $14,000. But what particularly annoys the UNRWA workers is that $5,000 of this is the difference between the cost of spare parts in the local market in Gaza and the cost of parts that could be brought in from outside. The Gaza market is always more expensive because of the cost of “back-to-back” transportation (transferring goods from an Israeli truck to a Palestinian one) of every product that enters the Strip, and the dwindling supply of products due to the restrictions on transfers.
Piling up in Jerusalem
Since the start of the intifada, UNRWA has been barred from using its own vehicles and drivers to bring in its own purchases to its facilities in the Strip. For security reasons, Israel demands that the agency bring the food and other goods that it purchases through the Karni checkpoint using the “back-to-back” method: in other words, all cargo must be unloaded and inspected at the crossing points and then reloaded onto other trucks.
UNRWA believes that this is a violation of the UN Convention on Privileges and Immunities and of a bilateral agreement between Israel and UNRWA from 1967, in addition to being a method that could damage equipment and an unnecessary economic burden to a welfare organization based on donations.
As time goes by, critical goods ranging from medicines, other supplies for clinics and two X-ray machines whose importance is immeasurable, to towels, school equipment and office supplies and computers, is piling up at UNRWA warehouses in Jerusalem. The medicines were distributed to West Bank clinics before they had a chance to spoil and replacements bought in the Gaza market. Since they were bought retail, UNRWA paid double for every item. The rest of the goods are stuck: 45 truckloads, each one containing 10 tons.
In meetings with UNRWA and representatives of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the coordinator of government activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the latter offered a compromise similar to the one regarding the transfer of food: sacks of food (purchased by UNRWA abroad and shipped to the Ashdod port) are transported in containers loaded onto trucks to Karni. The containers undergo a security check at the port. At Karni, the containers are uncoupled from the original truck and connected to a truck from Gaza, in a process known as hook-unhook.
According to UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen, the aid agency pays all the fees that Israel charges at Karni for transferring the food. UNRWA is now asking that Israel permit the transfer of the 450 tons of stranded goods, using a similar method, and also waive the transfer costs which amount to $25,000. UNRWA is willing to have all the containers examined by Israeli security people while they are being loaded in Jerusalem and to have an Israeli security escort to Karni. Lionel Brisson, director of UNRWA activities in the Gaza Strip, says that these requests were submitted to Israeli representatives in June and have gone unanswered.
The office of the coordinator of government activities in the West Bank and Gaza said in response that “the only reason the transfer of goods is being held up is UNRWA’s insistence on the principle of not using the `back-to-back’ method. UNRWA uses these goods in an effort to stop using the method, and in effect ignores the needs of the Palestinians by doing so. Even more questionable is UNRWA’s demand that Israel pay for the transport of the goods – there is no international obligation whatsoever on Israel’s side to do so. It would be incorrect to claim that Israel is responsible for the results, since they are a consequence of the security situation imposed by the Palestinians. In parallel, Israel makes every effort to facilitate UNRWA’s work on the ground (by waiving payment for the movement of goods and trucks through Karni, and more) and to facilitate its freedom of activity with daily assistance.
“Nevertheless, we cannot be flexible in a matter that could seriously affect the well-being of Israeli residents. The issue of transferring goods using the `back-to-back’ method is one of these matters.”
UNRWA officials are convinced that their proposal meets security requirements without the blatant violation of conventions and agreements. UNRWA officials also think Israel should waive the $25,000 charge for the transfer of the 450 tons of goods through Karni.
That $25,000 could pay a monthly salary of NIS 1,200 to about 90 laborers as part of an UNRWA project to create sources of income. The severe unemployment caused by the complete closure in the past year requires UNRWA, as well as various non-governmental organizations, to “invent” a series of projects that provide employment for even a limited period. An additional 5,400 jobs have been created since January.
Brisson relates that 65,000 people responded to UNRWA tenders for 3,500 jobs in various projects. UNRWA also gives direct financial contributions and goods to affected people. By June, it had handed out 51,524 blankets, 747 mattresses, 77 tents, 77 mats and 55 kitchen sets to families who lost their homes and property.
As usual, it is the donor states – mainly European countries – who pay the price. Since October 2000, they have responded to three UNRWA appeals for additional, immediate aid to cope with the worsening situation of the refugees and to fund various aid and welfare initiatives. The response to the first appeal, in October and November 2000, was overwhelming: about $44 million was promised and nearly the entire sum reached its target.
Signs of donor fatigue showed up after the second appeal, in February 2001: The states promised $39,390,000 and came up with only 60 percent, about $23 million. The response to the third appeal, in June, seemed very positive: $76,890,000 was promised for various projects. Of that, $20,440,581 was approved. But in practice, only $4,198,317 of that amount has been covered, about 5 percent. As a result, UNRWA did not distribute food baskets in July and August. In keeping with the level of donations, it was forced to cut back on its projects and subsist from hand to mouth.
The gap between the promised amount and the actual sums given shows that on one hand European states realize that this is a long-term emergency, and on the other hand – they are really tired of it.