Publication
Omar Shaban Ismail · QudsNet · 2018
An analytical argument that the UN reconstruction mechanism for Gaza has outlived its purpose and must be abolished rather than reformed.
News reports have circulated that the three parties concerned — the United Nations, through the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for the Middle East Peace Process, Mr Nickolay Mladenov; the Palestinian government, headed by Dr Rami Hamdallah; and the Israeli army, through its Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Mr Poly Mordechai — have agreed to carry out a review of the United Nations mechanism for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip (GRM), in force since September 2014. After three years, the parties concerned have come to realise that this mechanism needs to be reviewed, which proves the correctness and the soundness of the position taken by the many local and international observers who rejected it.
Shortly after the end of the 2014 war, and just before the donor conference for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip held on 12 October 2014, the United Nations — through the former Representative of the Secretary-General for the Middle East Peace Process, Mr Robert Serry — put itself forward as a substitute for the Palestinian Authority and acting on behalf of the Israeli occupation, in order to play the role of intermediary in bringing in the raw materials needed for reconstruction, monitoring them, and deciding which of those whose homes had been destroyed was deserving and which was not. This deprived the Palestinian Authority of the honour of serving its own people, and added a new layer to the blockade that has been imposed on the Gaza Strip for more than ten years. Palestinian society — researchers, the private sector and civil society organisations — expressed on dozens of occasions its strong rejection of this mechanism, calling on the Palestinian government not to accept it. At the time, the United Nations argued that Palestinian reconciliation had not yet been achieved, and that the consensus government, which had been formed a few weeks before the 2014 war, had not yet assumed its powers. In justifying the creation of the Gaza reconstruction mechanism, Mr Robert Serry said that this mechanism was a means of coordination between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government to accelerate the reconstruction process, adding that it would not only address Israeli security concerns, but would also strengthen the confidence of donors, thereby securing the funding needed for reconstruction.
The consequences of applying the United Nations mechanism:
Under this mechanism the United Nations turned itself into a contracting and security company, and replaced the Israeli blockade with a United Nations blockade. The design and implementation of this mechanism were supervised by the "United Nations Office for Project Services" (UNOPS). The United Nations, which is supposed to work for peace, for the establishment of justice and for the lifting of oppression, has for decades been transformed into an instrument for deepening oppression, organising it and supervising it. This mechanism is extremely slow and extremely costly: dozens of international experts work on it and receive fantastical remuneration, alongside computerised systems that have cost vast sums, in order to monitor the bag of cement that enters the Gaza Strip and to ensure that it is not used for other purposes. It is worth noting that thousands of tonnes of building materials entered openly and officially through the Rafah crossing, which rendered this mechanism meaningless. Many international and local reports have dealt with the existence of strong suspicions of corruption in the implementation of this mechanism. Likewise, the relationship of foreign staff with the victims of the war whose homes had been destroyed, and with Palestinian suppliers, was marred by condescension and arrogance and by a great deal of suspicion and injustice in its application, which drove local suppliers to organise many marches and demonstrations to protest against the United Nations, the author of this mechanism, and to demand its abolition. I had warned on many occasions, and before its implementation began, against agreeing to this mechanism. I myself spoke to President Mahmoud Abbas about the danger of accepting it, at the meeting that brought together a number of businessmen from Gaza at the presidential headquarters on 17 September 2014. Indeed, resentment of and dissatisfaction with the United Nations mechanism drove some states and international UN institutions to refuse to work through it, preferring instead to supervise their Gaza reconstruction programmes directly. Some UN agencies also expressed their dissatisfaction with this mechanism as a result of the marked delays in the implementation schedules of their projects. The United Nations mechanism for the reconstruction of Gaza has expanded to cover applications for new construction as well, so that it is no longer confined to programmes for rebuilding what the wars destroyed.
It is important here to know that in 1973 the United Nations established a commercial arm called the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). On its behalf, the United Nations Office for Project Services undertakes the provision of project management, procurement and infrastructure services in dozens of countries around the world, in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Through its Office for Project Services, the United Nations replaces national governments, deprives them of serving their own peoples, and confiscates their right to learn and to build their capacities. The United Nations benefits from conflicts and from the reconstruction operations that take place once a conflict has ended. Shortly after the fall of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on 20 October 2011, the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki-moon, announced that his organisation would send 200 UN experts to Libya to assess the damage and to contribute to reconstruction. Mr Ban Ki-moon, who did nothing — neither he nor his organisation — to stop the war and the destruction in Libya, hastened to send his international teams so as to secure a share of the reconstruction cake and to guarantee a number of highly paid jobs. Everyone loses in Libya except the United Nations agencies, the oil companies and the security companies that travel across continents and conflicts. The same will be repeated in Syria and in Yemen once the war has laid down its burdens.
The reconstruction process must be localised:
Because it is a failed, costly and non-national mechanism — indeed one of the causes of the suffering and of the severe economic stagnation in the Gaza Strip — what is required is to halt it altogether, and not merely to review it. With the signing of the recent reconciliation agreement and the beginning of the consensus government's exercise of its functions in the Gaza Strip, and particularly at the crossings, the need for the United Nations mechanism falls away. Reconstruction is a national process par excellence, and it is for the official and civil national institutions to take charge of the process in all its details. Reconstruction is an opportunity to repair the political, economic and academic structures in the two wings of the homeland, which have been greatly damaged by the division.
Topic: Gaza Reconstruction — Text © QudsNet — archived here with attribution to the source. — Original source