UN official to Haaretz: Israel 'nourishing despair' in Gaza

Ha'aretz - Akiva Eldar
... interview with John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator...

This summer, after three and a half years in office, Holmes will return to Britain to head an important research institute. He no longer has to fear the sharp tongue of Israeli officials, who see any criticism of Israel as a synonym for anti-Semitism.

........ Gaza is not a nest of terrorists. For the most part there are people who just want to live ordinary lives, and they are being undermined by what's happening. So you are in danger of creating a generation of people who are nourished on despair.

......Eighty percent of the people in Gaza are essentially dependent on outside food aid, either from UNWRA or the World Food Program. Not because there isn't food in the shops - there is - but they can't afford it, or they can't afford enough of it because any livelihoods that there were, any jobs that there were outside the government have effectively disappeared. Most private businesses have been destroyed, essentially by the blockade - bulldozed - and the rest finished off by Cast Lead...

What do you think will happen after Egypt completes its wall and closes the tunnels? How do you see Gaza's future?

If Egypt did complete the wall and effectively block all the tunnels, the amount of goods going in across the crossing points - if it remained at the current level - would be completely unsustainable.
 
.....Israel has certain responsibilities as to the siege in Gaza. Israel, as we see it, continues to be the occupying power. And it is not fulfilling those responsibilities as we believe it should.

The basic medical position [in Gaza] is not unreasonable, but there is a wider point which is not just about Gaza, but about the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where barriers, checkpoints and restricted movement means that access for many people to basic medical services is getting more and more difficult. The staff of hospitals in East Jerusalem can't get to work, and the patients can't get there either.

This is only one illustration of a much bigger problem of how restrictions of movement and difficulties of access to basic services is being cut off, and people can't do the things they used to be able to do.

Your division is responsible for many distressed areas worldwide. Why do you devote so much energy to this small place?
It is a small geographical area but also a very focused problem with very significant humanitarian problems - people facing eviction after living in one place for 60 years, because of settler pressure; the Bedouins in Area C increasingly being squeezed from all directions and finding it very difficult to survive.

But there are many more long-running problems, and every time I come back I don't find that things have improved...   Full story