Publication
Omar Shaban Ismail · Felesteen Online · 2020
An opinion column by Omar Shaban criticising international organisations' use of the word 'resilience' to describe life under the Gaza blockade. He argues the term hides dangerous meanings, suggesting the situation is bearable, and manufactures a false heroism that serves institutions living off crisis management; coming from people who enjoy freedom of movement it is condescending. He adds that division and blockade have been a golden goose for some of these organisations, and repeats his warning against UN oversight of Gaza's reconstruction.
Omar Shaban, 2020: calling Gaza's survival under blockade 'resilience' makes the unbearable sound bearable and serves those who manage the crisis.
Some international organisations often use the term "resilience" to describe the ability of the people of the Gaza Strip to live under the blockade. What this fine-sounding term actually means is that the blockade of the Gaza Strip has not killed people yet. It is a term that flatters some people's feelings, but it hides dangerous negative meanings behind it. It implies that the situation, however harsh, is still bearable, and that people are living their lives as usual. These institutions rely on formal, quantitative indicators without looking into the consequences of the blockade for the quality of life, now and in the future.
I remember that a UN agency organised a regional conference on the Gaza Strip whose title was "resilience".
It is a term that manufactures a false, inhuman heroism for the people of the Gaza Strip. It serves the institutions that live off managing the crisis and keeping it going, and it relieves them of making any real effort to end it. I used to say to every foreign delegation that described the situation in Gaza in these terms: "If the situation is as good as you see it, why don't you come and live here with us?"
It is a thoroughly racist and condescending term when it is spoken by someone who enjoys freedom of movement, travel and work, drinks clean water, has good health services and feels secure about his children's future, to someone deprived of all these basics.
The truth is that everything in the Gaza Strip — people, institutions, objects, plants and animals — is utterly exhausted and dies a thousand times a day. The people of the Gaza Strip, like people anywhere else in the world, have the right to a normal life.
I have written many times that the Palestinian division and the Israeli blockade have been like a hen that lays golden eggs for some international organisations that suffer from neither. Some of these institutions live off the weakness and fragmentation of the Palestinian political system. The United Nations, which has turned into a contractor in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, is still a clear example of how international institutions profit from the absence of an official and civil-society role in the reconstruction process. I have written several times about the danger of the United Nations taking charge of overseeing the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.
The term "resilience" is like putting poison in honey: attractive on the outside, deadly within.
Topic: Humanitarian Crisis — resilience discourse · international organisations · blockade — Text © Felesteen Online — archived here with attribution to the source. — Original source