6 - 12 September 2001
Issue No.550
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 6 - 12 September 2001 Issue No.550 |
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UNRWA in Cairo
UNRWA, the United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees, tells the Arab League that the Israeli army is making its job almost impossible. Dina Ezzat reports
As the situation in the occupied territories worsens, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the Near East (UNRWA) is finding it harder and harder to provide emergency aid for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA has the usual complaints of UN agencies: straitened finances, measly contributions from donor countries. But during the past few months, UNRWA has had another, less usual problem to contend with: harassment by the Israeli army.
In Cairo late last week, UNRWA General-Commissioner Peter Hansen spoke at length with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa about the difficulties UNRWA's workers face. His list of complaints was long. It included everything from direct harassment of UNRWA workers to the blocking of medical shipments from Jerusalem to Gaza and the West Bank.
A few days after meeting Moussa, Hansen himself was harassed by the Israeli authorities. On Thursday, Israeli troops closed a main road leading to Rafah and prevented Hansen passing through to a camp.
"If you do not walk away we will shoot," cried a soldier from one of the tanks that blocked the passage to Hansen and his relief convoy. Hansen, dressed in a bullet proof vest, had to take a dusty back road to visit families at Rafah. He called the Israeli action "another obstacle in the way of our humanitarian work; as a UN agency we ought to be able to move freely."
In Cairo last week, Hansen said his priority was to improve a "situation that was very difficult." These difficulties, and more, will appear in a report that UNRWA is currently compiling to present to a UN General Assembly meeting later this month.
Arab League officials say that Moussa and Hansen agreed that Israel's policies promise neither an improvement of the situation for Palestinians or of working conditions for UNRWA's workers. "We agreed that the situation is becoming more and more difficult in the refugee camps, due to the huge political tension induced by Israeli policies," Moussa said, in a joint press conference with Hansen.
Before Hansen left, Moussa pledged closer Arab League-UNRWA cooperation. This will manifest itself in closer cooperation over scholarships awarded to Palestinian refugees to study in Arab universities and higher academies directly affiliated to the Arab League or to the Arab Union of Universities.
Moussa also promised Hansen that he would encourage Arab donor states to contribute to UNRWA's budget. Last June, UNRWA issued its third emergency appeal since the beginning of the Intifada last September. The appeal was for US$ 77 million. That sum will only cover UNRWA's activities until the end of this year. "It would be too sad if we have to tell refugees that we cannot offer them food or housing because we have no money," Hansen said, while in Cairo. So far, only two thirds of this sum has been promised, let alone received.
To better inform Arab officials about the conditions and needs of the Palestinian refugee camps, Hansen plans to visit Cairo again next week, to take part in the Arab foreign ministers council meeting that will open on Sunday. But if the crisis in Palestine demands that he stays there, Hansen will try to join the Arab foreign ministers meeting scheduled to take place at the end of the month in New York on the margin of the UN General Assembly meeting.
UNRWA hopes for a larger Arab financial contribution to its regular and emergency budgets. But UNRWA officials also insist that the problem of the Palestinian refugees is not one for Arabs alone but for the international community as a whole. "Providing aid to the emergency programmes that we are trying to implement would be a good message from the international community to the Palestinian refugees, especially at this time, when hope of any political settlement seems slim," Hansen said. He added that as long as the refugees have to stay in their camps, the international community must address their frustration and fears.
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