January 15, 2009
Relief Groups Say Gaza Conditions Have Become 'Intolerable'
By Caroline Preston
The shelling of a United Nations building in Gaza earlier today underscored the dangerous conditions in which aid workers operate in the area, more than two weeks into a military siege that has aggravated an already dire humanitarian situation.
Two U.N. workers and a CARE employee have been killed since the fighting began on December 27, and relief officials say the safety situation has all but prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid in an area where poverty and hunger rates were already astronomically high.
“Eighty percent of people were already dependent on food aid before this fighting,” said Rick Perera, a spokesman for CARE. “So it’s been a situation where an already difficult environment for delivering aid has become intolerable.”
International relief workers have been largely blocked by Israeli and Egyptian government officials from entering Gaza, and few groups were able to stockpile significant amounts of food and other supplies before the fighting broke out. Now, the organizations face added security challenges in entering Gaza.
While Save the Children’s staff members who live in Gaza have been able to distribute parcels of stockpiled food to 20,000 people since the war started, the charity has not been able to bring in more.
World Vision has purchased 50,000 food packages and blankets, but has also been unable to get them into Gaza. Rachel Wolff, a spokeswoman for the charity, said she hoped World Vision could do so before the end of the week.
The nonprofit group Internews Network had hoped to supply people in Gaza with radios that would provide information on hospital openings and other humanitarian news, but a vendor refused to sell the radios to the charity, and so far the organization has not been able to find a route into Gaza.
Relief groups say a three-hour humanitarian cease fire designed to give them time to bring in aid is insufficient, particularly as most of the roads into Gaza are devastated.
Some charities are asking their supporters to call for a permanent cease fire. Oxfam America, for example, recruited 66,000 people—52,000 of which were via the social-networking site Facebook—to fill out petitions calling on President Bush to ask for a cease fire.
Fund-Raising Difficulties
Many groups are raising money for victims of the fighting, but they say their efforts have been hampered somewhat by some donors’ reluctance to give until they see more aid being delivered.
Among the groups accepting donations:
- American Near East Refugee Aid, which has brought in $138,700 online. It has also secured a $365,000 grant from a French charity.
- Mercy Corps, which has raised $175,000 online from American donors, and secured $100,000 from a charity in Qatar. The group has also raised $44,000 from British donors.
- Oxfam America, which has won $75,000 online.
- Save the Children, which has secured $50,000 in gifts and pledges from American donors. The charity’s worldwide operations have brought in $300,000.
- World Vision has raised $5,000 online.
Fund raisers say they do not believe that the economy is taking a bite out of fund raising, but that they face an uphill battle in encouraging donors to give for victims of a political crisis, as opposed to a natural disaster.
“People react differently when it’s a conflict or a complex emergency,” said Ken Mallette, director of Oxfam America’s annual fund.
Groups that focus on the Middle East say fund raising for this crisis compares favorably to past emergencies. American Near East Refugee Aid raised just $96,000 online in the fiscal year that encompassed the 2006 Lebanon war with Israel. That was about $40,000 less than the charity has raised for this emergency.
Michael Austin, the charity’s director of online fund raising, says donors have also been mailing in checks, some in envelopes the group sent out as part of fund-raising solicitations as long ago as three years.
Many charities are using blogs, text messages, and other tools to both raise awareness about the humanitarian situation and communicate with victims.
One of Save the Children’s staff members in Gaza, for example, is blogging for the CNN program Anderson Cooper 360. Huffington Post is publishing a blog by an Oxfam America employee.
“We’ve found that blogs are especially useful in places like Burma and Gaza where it’s difficult for the media to have direct access,” said Mike Kiernan, a spokesman with Save the Children.
Long-Term Needs
Other groups are using technology to stay connected with beneficiaries of their programs. Shortly after the fighting broke out and most of Gaza lost electricity, Mercy Corps starting communicating via text message with youths who participate in a program that links American students with their peers in Gaza.
The charity is also running a blog on its Web site that includes many of the students’ perspectives, and creating a way to follow the information on the microblogging site Twitter. MSNBC has featured the students’ blogs, drawing some viewers and donations to the charity’s Web site, saud Jeremy Barnicle, a spokesman with Mercy Corps.
While international relief groups worry about getting food and other supplies into Gaza, people who live in the region say they are also concerned about the longer-term development needs.
Nora Lester Murad is executive director of Dalia Association, a Palestinian community foundation in the West Bank she established to give Palestinians a greater say in development projects.
She says her group would like to support projects in Gaza but has been unable to because of the difficulties of getting access to the territory since an 18-month blockade by Israel after Hamas took power. One of her board members, meanwhile, lives in Gaza, but the two have never met.
Ms. Murad’s group has raised about $100,000 since it was created two years ago, but she says that fund raising has been difficult because of some donors’ concerns that their contributions could be interpreted as lending support for terrorism, and because of simple bureaucratic challenges such as the difficulties of wiring money to the Palestinian territories.
Ms. Murad worries the recent fighting will only add to those concerns, and hopes that donors who give to humanitarian relief will not forget about longer-term assistance: “We’re really struggling, and Gaza is going to make it much, much harder.”
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As demonstrated by video footage, the Israeli goverment has permitted hundreds of humanitarian aid trucks to go into Gaza. Hamas has inhibited the distribution. Hamas, as a terror organization with terrorist tactics, regularly puts civilians in harm’s way. Civilians should NEVER be forced to live amongst combatants – this is a well known tenet of International Law and a stated War Crime.
— Tikvah L'Shalom Jan 15, 06:19 PM #
Where is balance— where is the fairness to point out the terror in Sederot and Ashkelon— and where is the balance to point out that the UN allows its ambulances to transport Hamas terrorists? I am disappointed in the Chronicle for its lack of objective reporting
— A lover of Balance Jan 15, 08:03 PM #
The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was “given” by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East. We are frequently told that we must sympathise with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. […] What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy.
—Bertrand Russell, 31 January 1970
— Fair? Balance? Jan 16, 11:34 PM #
Your’e absolutely right Mr.or Mrs. Fair? Balance? The United States should give its land back to the Indians for the Indians should not have to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty. We Americans should also sit back, like Isreal, as missiles are launched from Canada, without retaliating. War is ugly but peace can be achieved if the agenda does not include “wipe them off the map.” Until both sides accept the existance of each other, eventual nuclear destruction is inevitable.
— Bernard Miller Jan 17, 09:10 PM #
Please, folks, read this excellent article for what it is – an expose of what happens to real people living in a war zone – regardless of who started it, or who is “right” or who is “wrong.” This article is about the effects of war. Those effects have no “right or wrong.” Those effects are simply reality – a nightmarish hell for those who must live with the results of this ongoing war.
I am dismayed at these responses from leaders in the charitable world, who work with such realities in their own backyards every day – treating the homeless, the downtrodden, those suffering with mental illness, people with addiction. You do this work with no regard to the “right or wrong” of your clients’ circumstances. You are more likely to instead say, “The reality is our clients are sick, and we must help them. The reason for their sickness is for another discussion. First, let’s take care of their suffering.” No judgement about why they are in the circumstances they are in. First, treat their suffering. First show compassion.
There is no “fair” or “balance” in describing reality for regular people living in the hellish conditions of communities decimated by war – any war. Put yourself in the shoes of just a regular person trying to live in Gaza right now. Imagine that every one of those families was walking into your agency for service. Would you first condemn that person based on who you think is right or wrong? Or would you do everything you could to make the hurting stop?
To those readers who do not like reading about such realities, I urge you to consider the Buddha’s words: “Hate never dispelled hate; only love dispels hate.” Each and every one of us has the choice, every day. We can perpetuate hate ourselves, pointing fingers and blaming (“It’s not my responsibility – they started it!”).
Or we can take the first step in working to create real peace. That first step is simply to understand with compassion and empathy the suffering on all sides. And for helping take us on that first step, I thank Ms. Preston for a job well done.
Hildy Gottlieb
Author – The Pollyanna Principles: Reinventing “Nonprofit Organizations” to Create the Future of Our World
http://www.HildyGottlieb.com/
— Hildy Gottlieb Jan 24, 01:15 PM #