Peace is the ultimate gift

Yesterday, April 7th, marked 6 months of the conflict in Gaza. It has caused unprecedented loss of lives, injured people, forced displacements and damages that will take years to rebuild. It started following the unacceptable and horrific attack by  Hamas on innocent Israeli people that killed more than 1,200 and left a trauma that will also take years to heal. All of this happened in a context of growing instability in the region that is felt in the entire world.

A few thoughts I wanted to share:

• While the international community focuses on a cease-fire and humanitarian assistance, the question of the reconstruction and medium-term governance of Gaza must be addressed right now. With an estimated 70% of the infrastructure destroyed, Gaza is unlivable. Humanitarian assistance will not be sufficient without innovative approaches to quickly rebuild critical infrastructure. If this is not addressed properly, people will have no other choice than to flee Gaza, and we will face a long-term refugee crisis in the whole region and beyond, which we are not ready to manage. Enabel is currently thinking about what innovative solutions it can bring on the reconstruction efforts.
• UNRWA plays a critical role and has to be supported. As the director of a development organisation and a former director of a humanitarian organisation, I was shocked to see how quickly some countries condemned UNRWA and stopped funding its activities, following allegations that some of its staff were involved in the attacks of October 7th. In most similar situations in other contexts, Governments would have asked for a detailed audit before taking any decision. But now, some Governments condemned UNRWA before it had even time to defend itself. This feels as a slap in the face to all those -like us- that engage in humanitarian assistance. Because, obviously, this kind of job includes risks. When you manage 30,000 staff like UNRWA does, it is almost impossible to guarantee the integrity of every single one of them, even with the best prevention, screening and audit systems. A handful of people who don't care about the integrity of the organisation should not be a reason to question the raison d’être of the entire organization. UNRWA’s work is still valuable and necessary, and many people depend on its support to survive.
• This shows that decisions are still far too often taken in a political manner, and not based on facts and figures. And this de facto creates a feeling of double standards among our partners across the globe. As previously mentioned in another blog, principles of international humanitarian law, which are clearly defined in international conventions, should be respected in all cases. That is obviously not the case in this conflict, and it will have a negative impact on the credibility of the international community and some countries in particular for years to come.
• The fact that every critical expression on the current Government of Israel is considered as being antisemitic is also an important hindrance to ensure proper coverage of the conflict by the international community and the media. This has caused the international community to remain silent about the illegal colonization of the West Bank and violations of human rights by Israel on many occasions. The international community should have acted more swiftly long before the recent escalation of the conflict.
• Fake news does not help. When we announced that Enabel ’s office in Gaza had been completely destroyed, we were initially accused of spreading fake news. Even now some people are not convinced that our office was really destroyed. I could not sleep for several nights and I started to doubt the information I had and the facts communicated by my own team. My own image was used by officials in a picture of our office, showing Hamas tunnels underneath it. I cannot guarantee that there were no tunnels,  but there is also no evidence that there were. There is also propaganda and disinformation on the Palestinian side, and that should be properly analyzed and equally condemned.
• The victims of all this are people, on both sides of the conflict. Families in Israel who mourn their loved ones, are desperate for news about the hostages in Gaza. They want to live in peace. The entire population of Gaza is experiencing an unprecedented level of suffering with more than 1.5 million people displaced, on the verge of famine. The longer we wait to find a solution for the conflict, the more complex reconciliation will be.

So today I want to use this picture that I took in Gaza a few years ago. It shows that behind the word Gaza, there are innocent people. They deserve and need the international community to be bold on taking the necessary steps towards a long-term peaceful solution.