Publication
Omar Shaban Ismail · Sama News Agency · 2014
Amid the Israeli bombardment under way since 8 July, Omar Shaban warns of companies, organisations and individuals who see the war as a chance to profit from the “donations cake”, exploiting the weakness of the consensus government and its silence on how donations are handled. He calls on relief funds and donation campaigns to disclose who manages the money and the criteria for spending it, and on the consensus government to publish a detailed statement on the funds allocated to Gaza, most of which were assigned to international organisations, and to pay the salaries of Gaza government employees, thousands of whom had received no salary for seven months. He recalls that hundreds of families whose homes were destroyed in the 2008–2009 and 2012 wars were never compensated despite the money allocated at the Sharm el-Sheikh conference in March 2009.
Omar Shaban, July 2014: Gaza relief funds must disclose who manages the money and how it is spent, to keep war profiteers out.
The ongoing Israeli bombardment has been escalating since Tuesday, July 8, accompanied by the shelling and destruction of thousands of homes, public institutions, and infrastructure, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Gazans from their residential areas. Some observations:
· At a time when the Gaza Strip is being subjected to unprecedented aggression and destruction, there are many companies, institutions, and individuals, both inside and outside, who see this as a major opportunity to enrich themselves by securing a share of the donations pie. The weakness of the National Consensus Government, its lack of sufficient experience, its complete silence, and its failure to clarify the mechanism of donations and the channels for their distribution provide a golden opportunity for these institutions and figures to engage in their plunder.
· The multiplicity of relief funds and donation campaigns for the Gaza Strip, whether within Palestine or at the regional level. While appreciating these efforts and those responsible for them, work must be done to find a clear mechanism for monitoring and following up on these donations and clarifying to those affected how they can benefit from them. They must fully announce to society who is managing these funds and the criteria for disbursing them. Likewise, fundraising campaigns must announce in advance how this assistance will be distributed and who the intermediary persons and institutions will be through whom the disbursement will take place.
· For the record, many international institutions had been suffering from weakness in their budgets in the previous period, and therefore they are waiting for the war to end so they can benefit by filling their coffers and bringing new employees from their countries, which suffer from unemployment and financial crises, through benefiting from the expected funding pie for the Gaza Strip, especially Arab funding.
· Employees of the Gaza Government have not received any salary advances until now, and thousands of them have not received any salary for seven months. This is injustice in its purest form. These funds can include these employees within their programs. The National Consensus Government must work to pay their salaries so that unity may truly be embodied on the ground.
· What is the fate of the funds allocated by the National Consensus Government to the Gaza Strip? How much was allocated, and has it actually arrived or not? And how will it be distributed? As I have learned, the greater part of these funds was allocated to international institutions operating in the Gaza Strip. It is not clear why most of it was allocated to international institutions. It is also not clear how it will be distributed and who is responsible for administering it. The government is required to issue a detailed statement clarifying all these aspects.
· Some worn-out and expired figures have initiated fundraising campaigns for the Gaza Strip; these are figures long known for corruption. These figures, who were among the causes of the catastrophes that befell the Gaza Strip and who did everything in their power to besiege Gaza in the past, will resort to distributing part of this money through their network of personal relationships without any accountability, as happened before. They are not collecting donations for the beautiful eyes of Gaza, but in order to inflate their bank accounts and in an attempt—certainly doomed to fail—to polish their history. They are brokers of wars and disasters.
· As a reminder only, hundreds of families whose homes were destroyed in the 2008–2009 war and the 2012 war still have not received any compensation, despite the enormous sums allocated for this purpose, whether at the Sharm el-Sheikh Conference on March 2, 2009, or through the many programs announced at that time.
Topic: Humanitarian Crisis — 2014 Gaza war · relief funds · aid transparency · consensus government — Text © Sama News Agency — archived here with attribution to the source. — Original source