Article: The UN's Gaza reconstruction mechanism should be ended, not reviewed

Omar Shaban – Palestine

Introduction:-

The news carried that the three related parties — 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 the coordinator of its activities in the territories Mr Poli Mordechai — have agreed to conduct a review of the United Nations mechanism for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, GRM, in effect since September 2014. After three years, the related parties realised that this mechanism needs review — which proves the correctness and soundness of the position of many local and international observers rejecting this mechanism.

Summary of the story:-

Soon after the end of the 2014 war and shortly before the holding of the donors' conference for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip 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 on behalf of the Israeli occupation, to play the role of intermediary in the entry of the raw materials needed for reconstruction, the oversight of them, and the deciding of who deserves and who does not among those whose homes were destroyed. This deprived the Palestinian Authority of the honour of serving its people and added a new layer to the blockade 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 their severe rejection of this mechanism, calling on the Palestinian government not to accept it. The United Nations argued at the time that the Palestinian reconciliation process had not yet been achieved and that the consensus government, formed a few weeks before the 2014 war, had not yet taken its powers. In his justification of creating the Gaza reconstruction mechanism, Mr Robert Serry spoke of this mechanism as a means of coordination between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government to hasten the reconstruction process, adding that this mechanism would not only treat the Israeli security concerns but would also strengthen the donors' confidence, securing the funding needed for the reconstruction process.

The repercussions of applying the United Nations mechanism:-

Under this mechanism the United Nations turned into a contracting and guarding company, and the Israeli blockade was replaced with a UN blockade. The design and implementation of this mechanism was supervised by the United Nations Office for Project Services “UNOPS”. The United Nations — which is supposed to work for achieving peace, establishing justice, and lifting injustice — turned decades ago into a tool for deepening injustice, organising it, and supervising it. This mechanism is very slow and very costly: dozens of international experts work on it, drawing fantastical rewards, and computerised programmes costing vast sums to monitor the sack of cement that enters the Gaza Strip and guarantee it is not exploited for other purposes. Worth mentioning is that thousands of tonnes of building materials entered from the Rafah crossing openly and officially, which made this mechanism meaningless. Many international and local reports took up the existence of strong suspicions of corruption in this mechanism's application. Likewise the relation of the foreign employees with the war's victims whose homes were destroyed, and with the Palestinian suppliers, was marred by haughtiness, arrogance, much doubt, and injustice in its application — which drove the local suppliers to organise many marches and demonstrations in protest against the United Nations, owner of this mechanism, demanding its cancellation. I had warned on many occasions, and shortly before the start of its application, against agreeing to this mechanism. I myself spoke to His Excellency President Mahmoud Abbas, at the meeting that gathered a number of businessmen from Gaza at the presidential headquarters on 17 September 2014, of the danger of accepting it. Indeed, the grumbling and dissatisfaction with the United Nations mechanism drove some states and international UN institutions to refuse to work through it, preferring direct supervision of their programmes in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Likewise some UN institutions following the United Nations expressed their dissatisfaction with this mechanism as a result of the noticeable delay in the implementation schedules of their projects. The United Nations mechanism for Gaza's reconstruction expanded to include new building requests — no longer confined to the programmes of rebuilding what the wars destroyed only.

What is UNOPS:-

It is important here to know that the United Nations founded a commercial arm in 1973 called the United Nations Office for Project Services, UNOPS. The United Nations Office for Project Services undertakes, on its behalf, the provision of project-management, procurement, and infrastructure services in dozens of states around the world in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The United Nations, through its office for project services, substitutes for the national governments, deprives them of serving their people, and confiscates their right to learn and build their capacities. The United Nations benefits from disputes and from the reconstruction processes that proceed after conflict's end. Soon 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 contribute to reconstruction. Mr Ban Ki-moon — who did nothing, he or his organisation, to stop the war and destruction in Libya — hastened to send his international crews to guarantee obtaining a share of the reconstruction cake and guarantee some high-paid jobs. Everyone loses in Libya except the United Nations organisations, the oil companies, and the security companies that cross continents and conflicts. And the case will repeat in Syria and Yemen when the war lays down its burdens.

The reconstruction process must be localised:

And because it is a failed, costly, non-national mechanism — indeed one of the causes of the suffering and the great economic stagnation in the Gaza Strip — what is required is to stop working with it entirely, not merely to review it. With the signing of the latest reconciliation agreement and the consensus government's beginning to exercise its work in the Gaza Strip, especially at the crossings, the need for the United Nations mechanism vanishes. Reconstruction is a national process par excellence, and the official and civil national institutions should take over the process in all its details. Reconstruction is an opportunity to restore the political, economic, and academic structures in the homeland's two wings, which were greatly harmed by the division.

February 2018