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<span class="credit"></span><b><big><big>Under cover of
reconstruction, UN and PA become enforcers of Israel’s Gaza
siege<br>
</big></big></b><br>
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<div class="submitted">
<span property="dc:date dc:created"
content="2014-10-17T16:42:50+00:00" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
rel="sioc:has_creator">Submitted by <span class="username"
xml:lang="" about="/users/ali-abunimah"
typeof="sioc:UserAccount" property="foaf:name" datatype="">Ali
Abunimah</span> on Fri, 10/17/2014 - 16:42<br>
<small><b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/under-cover-reconstruction-un-and-pa-become-enforcers-israels-gaza-siege">http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/under-cover-reconstruction-un-and-pa-become-enforcers-israels-gaza-siege</a></small></small></b></small><br>
</span> </div>
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media-element file-full" style="width:618px;"><br>
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<p>Details given in a confidential briefing this week confirm that
the UN has agreed to become the chief enforcer of Israel’s
ongoing siege of Gaza.</p>
<p>Under the guise of reconstruction, the UN will be monitoring
and gathering private information about Palestinian households
to be passed onto Israel, which will have a veto over which
families get aid to rebuild their homes.</p>
<p>This was presented as part of an effort to try to entrench and
legitimize the Israeli-backed Ramallah-based Palestinian
Authority of Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza.</p>
<p>Under the arrangements, Israel will be given even more
intrusive control over the lives of Palestinians in Gaza, who
will be subjected to onerous ongoing monitoring as they try to
rebuild their houses, communities and lives following Israel’s
summer massacre.</p>
<p>UN agencies estimate that almost 90,000 homes must be rebuilt,
in addition to hundreds of schools and other major
infrastructure systematically destroyed in Israel’s attack, or
degraded by years of blockade.</p>
<p>At a recent donor conference, $5.4 billion was pledged to help
rebuild Gaza, but as The Electronic Intifada reported, <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/who-benefits-billions-pledged-gaza-reconstruction">half
of the money will be diverted</a> to fill holes in the PA
budget.</p>
<p>This week UN Secretary-General <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/ban-ki-moon">Ban
Ki-moon</a>, who has faced <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/uns-ban-ki-moon-partner-israels-crimes/13716">forceful
Palestinian criticism</a> for his own inaction and complicity
in the face of the Israeli attack, visited the devastated Gaza
Strip.</p>
<p>There, <a
href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=49074">he
said</a> the destruction caused by Israel was “beyond
description.”</p>
<h2>The next stage of Israel’s blockade</h2>
<p>The high-level briefing was given by Nicholas O’Regan, country
director of the United Nations Office for Project Services
(UNOPS) and a colleague, in Jerusalem on Tuesday.</p>
<p>It was attended by more than a dozen heads and senior officials
from international nongovernmental organizations and joined by
colleagues in Gaza by telephone.</p>
<p>An attendee gave The Electronic Intifada a detailed account of
the briefing because they were alarmed at its contents and felt
Palestinians had a right to know what was being kept from them.</p>
<p>But the attendee asked to remain anonymous because they were
not authorized by their agency to speak publicly about the
matter.</p>
<p>The UN factsheet below provides an overview, but not all the
details of what was revealed in the briefing.</p>
<p>The attendee said that at the outset O’Regan warned
participants, “Be careful what you put out from this meeting.
Don’t undermine this. Think about all the people who want to
have their houses rebuilt.”</p>
<p>But the attendee concluded that O’Regan was using the plight of
Palestinians to cover up the controversial political aspects of
the deal which was <a
href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48730">brokered
between Israel and the PA last month by Robert Serry</a>,
United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace
Process (UNSCO), last month – although its details have been
kept under wraps.</p>
<p>“This is the next stage of Israel’s blockade of Gaza,” the
attendee said. “It started with a very crude blanket blockade,
where pencils and coriander were not allowed in, but now it is
becoming much more sophisticated, like the occupation of the
West Bank. And now, the international actors are being embedded
and made complicit in the siege.”</p>
<h2>Sullen resignation</h2>
<p>The secretive nature of the negotiations and now the details of
the agreement have antagonized international aid groups working
in Gaza.</p>
<p>The mood at other key UN agencies appears to be one of sullen
resignation rather than enthusiasm.</p>
<p>“We welcome the new mechanism and hope it becomes functional as
soon as possible to ensure that Gaza’s reconstruction needs are
fully met,” Chris Gunness, spokesperson for UNRWA, the UN agency
for Palestine refugees, told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>But he added, “While the mechanism must facilitate full
reconstruction it cannot be a substitute for the complete
lifting of the blockade including for exports, a position which
UNRWA and the international community strenuously demands.”</p>
<p>“Gaza has moved beyond the realm of humanitarian action alone.
We also need political action to resolve the underlying causes
of the conflict. Without this and accountability for violations
of international law by all parties to the conflict we fear a
return to the unsustainable pattern of blockade, rockets and
destruction,” Gunness said.</p>
<h2>“Legitimate government”</h2>
<p>According to the attendee, O’Regan said repeatedly that the
UNSCO deal is all about the “legitimate Government of Palestine
rebuilding Gaza.”</p>
<p>O’Regan claimed that the UN had only gotten involved at the
request of the “Government of Palestine” and that the “process
is owned and led by the Government of Palestine, under the
Ministry of Civil Affairs.”</p>
<p>But despite the PA – the so-called “Government of Palestine” –
serving as the public front, the details revealed in the meeting
indicate that the UN is now colluding to entrench, not lift,
Israel’s siege.</p>
<p>This could be seen, the attendee said, in the four-stage
mechanism for individuals to rebuild their homes in Gaza.</p>
<p>Before reconstruction gets underway, vendors – authorized
businesses that will procure building materials and distribute
them to end-users in Gaza – must be approved. UN officials have
already paid visits to six out of an expected twelve vendors.</p>
<p>Vendors are nominated first by the PA and then the UN inspects
them. Selection criteria include such things as having secure
facilities, CCTV cameras and an inventory system to account for
every bag of cement.</p>
<p>The restrictions are motivated by Israel’s demand that
Palestinians be unable to use so-called “dual-use” items to
exercise their right of resistance and self-defense against
Israeli occupation and repeated attacks.</p>
<p>No such international controls have been placed on Israel, the
occupying power that is in violation of dozens of UN
resolutions, to prevent it from obtaining weapons or other
supplies it uses to occupy and colonize Palestinians or to
attack Gaza.</p>
<h2>Information passed to Israel</h2>
<p>Then comes the four-stage process Palestinian households must
go through. It begins with a needs assessment for families whose
homes were destroyed. Data for each household including
confidential information like family ID card numbers, GPS
coordinates of the family’s home and other personal information
is then put into a database ostensibly under the control of the
PA.</p>
<p>Once the information is in the database, Israel will be given
forty-eight hours to object to any name on the list.</p>
<p>According to the attendee, O’Regan said that the UN itself was
not sharing information with Israel, but that this sharing would
be done by the PA and it would be up to the PA to decide what
information to share.</p>
<p>But, according to the attendee, “this is nonsense. If the UN is
doing the needs assessments along with the PA, then it is a
joint information-gathering and information-sharing effort.”</p>
<p>The attendee said that giving Israel an effective veto over who
gets aid violates a fundamental principle of humanitarian aid
agencies against beneficiary vetting based on such criteria as
religion or political affiliation. “But that’s what the database
allows, with the support and complicity of the UN,” the attendee
said.</p>
<p>“Throughout this whole talk [O’Regan] tried as much as he could
to make the UN seem a very naive player who is just doing this
to support the PA,” he observed.</p>
<h2>Profiting Israel</h2>
<p>Once the needs assessments are done, the approved vendors will
order supplies through Israel and vendors will have to be able
to track every item down to the last bag of cement.</p>
<p>Orders will be done in bulk through the PA, which will work
with the vendors. This raises concerns not only about the high
potential for corruption and profiteering by PA-linked
middlemen, but the likelihood that Israel will be the main
beneficiary.</p>
<p>With Israel severely restricting their access to world markets,
Palestinians must buy the bulk of their cement from an Israeli
near-monopoly called Nesher Israel Cement Enterprises, a company
deeply involved in exploiting the occupied West Bank, including
the construction of illegal colonies.</p>
<p>In the third stage, after vendors have received the supplies,
families will be able to pick up their building materials on
presentation of their IDs. They will receive only the exact
amount of supplies called for in the needs assessment.</p>
<p>And then many families will be subject to strict monitoring. UN
monitors will perform a “desk review” of ten percent of cases
and then up to a fifth of those will have on-site spot checks by
some one hundred monitors.</p>
<p>Job notices for “supply chain specialists” to monitor the
building materials coming into Gaza have been posted by a United
Arab Emirates-based multinational contractor called CTG Global,
<a href="http://ctgglobal.com/profile.asp">which works for
governments and militaries around the world</a> and which has
apparently been contracted by the UN to enforce the new regime.</p>
<p>O’Regan presented this inspection regime – reminiscent of the
controls Iraq was placed under during the decade before the 2003
US-led invasion – as being about “reconstruction with integrity,
to make sure the most needy receive their aid.”</p>
<p>The process for large-scale projects – schools, roads, the
power plant and sewage facilities – will be similar to the one
for individual households. The PA will submit each project
proposal to Israel and Israel will approve the projects on a
case-by-case basis, leaving it in overall control.</p>
<p>The timeframe for such approval has not even been agreed.
O’Regan told the briefing that the mechanism is already up and
running and the first bags of cement have already entered Gaza.</p>
<p>And while O’Regan described the arrangements as “temporary,”
they have no end-date – giving a high likelihood that like so
many other “temporary” arrangements governing the lives of
Palestinians, this one too will become permanent.</p>
<h2>Gaza as SuperMax Prison</h2>
<p>The details of the UNSCO arrangements come just days after
revelations in the Israeli media about Israel’s new approach to
the besieged Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>As Israeli journalist Dimi Reider <a
href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/gaza-reconstruction-new-israeli-strategy-289476965">reports
for <em>Middle East Eye</em></a>, the new Israeli strategy
“represents a decisive shift away from the idea of negotiating
an independent state for the Palestinians and toward a tightly
monitored ‘conflict management’ approach. Under this approach,
Palestinians will be allowed greater freedom of movement and
greater autonomy, but under close Israeli and international
surveillance.”</p>
<p>What this means for Gaza is alarming, as Reider reports:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>True, the influx of construction material and other goods
into the Strip will doubtless be a great relief to the
artificially starved Gazan economy. But the tight, almost
dystopian new controls envisioned in the plan underline
Israel’s approach to the Strip as being first and foremost a
gigantic prison – only it is being upgraded from a third-world
prison camp to an American cutting-edge SuperMax facility.
Much of the more tantalizing promises should be taken with a
heap of salt: complete freedom of movement except where
security concerns are raised is pretty much what Gazans enjoy
today; it just so happens that all of them, together and
apart, are seen as security concerns.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He adds: “The reconstruction sites will then be monitored by
Israeli drones, to make sure no materials are used for any other
purpose and that each bit of materiel is accounted for.”</p>
<p>And matching the attendee’s account of the briefing, “Private
homes will be rebuilt by private but also Israeli-vetted Gaza
contractors, who will manage the construction materials through
special software accessible also to Israel, and whose works will
also be monitored by drones.”</p>
<p>The attendee’s account of O’Regan’s briefing given to The
Electronic Intifada also accords with an account of the
arrangements <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/03/gaza-reconstruction-plan-un-israel-blockade">leaked
to <em>The Guardian</em> earlier this month</a>.</p>
<p>“Critics argue that plans for monitoring the import, storage
and sales of building materials – including installing video
cameras, setting up a team of international inspectors and the
creation of a database of suppliers and consumers – are more
appropriate for a suspect nuclear program than a postwar
reconstruction effort,” <em>The Guardian</em> observed.</p>
<p>Dr. Ramy Abdu, chair of Euro-Mid Observer For Human Rights,
also <a
href="http://www.alaraby.co.uk/politics/a50a1623-015c-4f2f-b739-9452c0595227">exposed
details about the plan</a> in an article in Arabic at <em>Alaraby
Aljadid</em> earlier this month.</p>
<p>Gaza is to become ground zero for disaster capitalism,
profiting from the suffering and incarceration of an entire
population.</p>
<p>This is the Gaza Siege 2.0. And it is brought to the
Palestinian people with the full complicity of the UN, the
Palestinian Authority and the so-called “international
community.”</p>
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