UNRWA's Commissioner General today in Gaza: Press Brief

UNRWA's Commissioner General today in Gaza: Press Brief

UNRWA's Commissioner General today in Gaza: Press Brief

By : Jadaliyya Reports
This statement, by Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General UNRWA, in Gaza City on 22 May 2018, highlights the devastating impact of the recent attacks on Palestinian protesters. The already threadbare healthcare institutions have been deluged by injuries, many apparently deliberately inflicted by Israeli forces to cause permanent disability. What is not mentioned in the statement, but is worth noting, is that UNRWA funding has been dramatically reduced recently, as the United States and other donor governments have made cut-back decisions that serve to exacerbate the conditions in besieged Gaza.

The press briefing by UNRWA's Commissioner General today in Gaza:

Good morning,

Thank you for joining us for this press briefing.

My current visit took place in the aftermath of the weeks of protests and marches here in the Gaza Strip and the appalling impact of the events that followed.

Yesterday, I visited an UNRWA health centre in Khan Younis, a partner rehabilitation centre in Deir El-Balah and the Al-Shifa hospital. These were shocking and deeply disturbing visits.

Allow me to describe this is some detail, focusing on three main dimensions.

First, I truly believe that much of the world completely underestimates the extent of the disaster in human terms that occurred in the Gaza Strip since the marches began on 30 March.

117 people were killed by Israeli forces – of which 13 were children - and over 13’000 people were injured, of which an estimated 3’500 by live ammunition. Let me put this in context.

During the 51 days of the conflict in Gaza in 2014, approximately 12’000 people were injured. In other words, as many people or even slightly more were injured during a total of 7 days of protests than were injured during the full duration of the 2014 conflict. That is truly staggering.

During the visits, I was also struck not only by the number of injured but also by the nature of the injuries. The demonstrators had been systematically shot either in the lower limbs (shattering femurs, knees and ankles), in the abdomen, the back or the head.

The pattern of small entry wounds and large exit wounds, indicates ammunition used caused severe damage to internal organs, muscle tissue and bones.

Both the staff or the MoPH hospitals, NGOs and UNRWA clinics are struggling to deal with extremely complex wounds and care.

Second, a direct consequence of the number of injured and nature of wounds, has been to bring the health-care system in Gaza to a breaking point. It is a health system already plagued by the multiple health pressures and severe medical stock limitations under regular circumstances.

When hundreds of injured demonstrators were brought into hospitals on the days of marches -particularly on 14 May - the health structures performed miracles but were overwhelmed.

Thousands of regular interventions - surgical or others - have been suspended or cancelled because of the need to focus on the injured and the many surgeries and follow-up treatment they require.

The pressure was so big on hospitals that many patients were discharged early and sent home to allow for the admission of new patients from the next day of demonstrations. UNRWA clinics have to date provided follow-up care for 1’600 such early released patients.

Third, seeing the hundreds of demonstrators with severe injuries to their lower limbs and the number of amputations that already took place and the large number still likely to occur, it was clear that many will live with life-long disabilities.

This means the entire health system in Gaza must prepare for a major upsurge in terms of post-operatic care and in particular with physical rehabilitation needs. This includes the UNRWA clinics and physiotherapy centers.

This morning I am sending out an emergency call for help to save Gaza’s health system and seriously boost UNRWA’s ability to provide care to the released patients and prepare for the many amputees that will require long-term assistance. The call for action and support also concerns mental health and psychosocial care.

The injured and their families are deeply traumatized and this adds another layer of trauma to the many already endured by the people in Gaza. UNRWA has developed a very strong capacity in this regard, but our current funding pressures place this activity under direct threat.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As I said at the beginning, Gaza is facing a major human and health-care disaster. It is a crisis of epic proportions, with immeasurable onward consequences.

Palestine refugees represent 70% of the population in Gaza and there are many refugees among the dead and injured. Including young children, for example boys and girls, students of UNRWA schools.

And because I have always refused anonymity in death and suffering, allow me to name the seven UNRWA students who were killed:

Husain, 14 years old
Alla, 16 years old
Mohamad, 14 years old
Jamal, 16 years old
Iz Al Deen, 14 years old
Wesal, 15 years old
Sadi Said, 16 years old

They were part of the 270,000 students in UNRWA schools in Gaza. Over 90% of whom have never left Gaza in their lives; have gone through three wars in their lives; faced multiple traumas resulting from occupation, blockade, violence and fear.

Dehumanizing an entire community will bring no peace to the region. Recognizing that Palestine refugees have the same rights and aspirations as everyone on this planet, that they have the right to live safely, in freedom, with adequate and essential services and opportunities, is essential.

Courage lies in helping everyone rediscover the humanity in the other.

Thank you.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412