Examination of Witnesses (Questions 108-119)
MR WILLIAM
BELL, MR
HENRY GRUNWALD
QC, DR FLORESCA
KARANASOU AND
MR ADAM
LEACH
31 OCTOBER 2006
Q108 Chairman: Good morning. Thank you
for coming to help us with our inquiry. Perhaps I could ask you
first to introduce yourselves and then I can explain how we are
going to conduct the session today.
Mr Leach: It is not a pleasure
to be here in the sense that it is difficult to be sitting here
three years on from 2003 talking about the same situation again,
but it is a pleasure to meet with the committee and with my fellow
witnesses. I am Adam Leach. I am the Director for Oxfam's work
in the Middle East and also in Central Asia, Russia and Eastern
Europe. Just to put our submission[1]
into context, we have been working in this part of the world together
with the Palestinians in 1949 and then in the Occupied Territories
and also in Israel more dedicatedly since the middle of the 1990s
and of course for several years before that too.
Mr Grunwald: Henry Grunwald, the
President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
Dr Karanasou: Floresca Karanasou.
I am the Middle East Programme Manager for Quaker Peace and Social
Witness, which is a department of the Religious Society of Friends
in Britain.
Mr Bell: William Bell: I am responsible
for advocacy on the Middle East, specifically for the Palestinians
and Israel. Like Adam, I would like, in a sense, to commiserate
with ourselves for being here three years on with a situation
that sees ever greater insecurity for both Palestinians and Israelis,
but a humanitarian situation that too often we see spiralling
out of control. I would suggest it almost is out of control. That
is our real concern. It would be interesting to see, in the course
of the evidence, whether or not any of the recommendations that
were made by this Committee last time to the Government have actually
either been following or managed to have any sort of impact on
the situation.
Q109 Chairman: Thank you for that.
As you will know collectively, we are going to Israel and the
Occupied Territories next week, simply to see for ourselves, as
best we can on the ground, what actually is happening and what
is the state and condition of people there, to try to make a judgment.
This is the International Development Committee. It is impossible
of course for us not to look at the political background and the
security situation, but our prime concern is how much, frankly,
British taxpayers' money is being increasingly diverted to deal
with poverty in a situation that is deteriorating and how much
more should be done or what can be done to try to turn the situation
round. Development, after all, is about enabling people to take
command of their own destiny rather than being aid-dependent and
increasingly aid-dependent. Perhaps I can start, given obviously
that we have had evidence from a number of quarters. We discussed
last week with officials from the Foreign Office and from DFID
the extent to which the international community first of all had
anticipated the possibility of a Hamas victory, to which I think
the answer was, we thought, not much, if at all, and whether they
had really considered the consequences of then saying, as a result
of that, "We cannot provide funding for the Palestinian Authority"
and where that actually leaves people on the ground. Oxfam, in
particular, had said that the international community were aware
of the consequences of suspending aid and yet they went ahead
with it. If that is your contention, that the international community
knew that suspending aid would inevitably lead to increased poverty
and hardship, what do you think they should have done? First of
all, should they not have suspended aid directly to the Palestinian
Authority? That is for discussion. Secondly, if they had, what
could and should they have done to minimise the consequences of
doing that? Can I also say, in terms of format, that obviously
if any of you want to comment on an answer someone has made, that
is all right, but do not feel that everyone needs to answer every
question, otherwise we will be here until teatime.
Mr Leach: I think it is important
to begin by saying that Oxfam is not a political institution,
nor do I sit here to offer political solutions to the situation.
Our position and our opposition to the suspension of aid was taken
not on ideological grounds but because of the likely impact of
a suspension of aid on the poverty and suffering of civilians.
Oxfam has been consistent in its position, together with others,
that it is civilians who are paying for the cost of this conflict.
We have regularly reviewed our position on the suspension of aid
and in reflection on the Temporary International Mechanism, but
we feel that we could not and indeed we cannot support a scheme
which effectively avoided existing mandated central and local
institutions. So our concern about the suspension of aid was that
this would not only lead to likely humanitarian damage, but would
also undermine Palestinian institutions, which were the institutions
recognised by the international community when they were set up
to take care of the needs of ordinary people. With respect to
your rather more difficult question about what should have happened,
the issue is: what should preoccupy the decision makers about
the use of British taxpayers' money and how to move a peace process
forward and not to impede it.
Mr Bell: I want to add to this
and, in a sense, paint a picture of where we are now and then
to comment and agree also with what Adam has said. I think it
is worth noting that in terms of poverty, which is our mandate,
in 1998, 20% of the Palestinian population fell below the poverty
line, ie £1.10 a day. By 2005, that had increased to 54%.
At this stage, I am merely saying what the figures are. I am not
giving a reason as to why they are what they are. After the election
of Hamas to the Palestinian Authority, that had climbed to 64%.
We now have a situation, before the official figures are out,
where 78% of Gazans live without any sort of income, which has
to be, in part, as a result of the suspension of aid to the Hamas
government. Like Adam for Oxfam, for Christian Aid, I am acutely
aware that the Government of Britain is caught between a rock
and a hard place in terms of taxpayers' money, but if we are to
see the real answer to tackling poverty amongst Palestinians and
insecurity which, all too often, leads to the deaths of both Israelis
and Palestinians, then we need to engage in a peace process. To
isolate one of those governments, however distasteful we find
its colour, is not going to move that peace process forward. Like
Oxfam, we are particularly concerned with how we can move the
peace process forward and how much more difficult that is now
that we have chosen to cease any form of engagement and, how rather
than isolate Hamas and give voice to the radicals—and of
those there are obviously far too many—actually to engage
them further along the democratic process so that they are able
to meet with the objectives, which we also agree with, of a commitment
to non-violence, a ratification or agreement with previous agreements
made by the Palestinian Authority, and of course very importantly
the recognition of Israel. We have agreed with all of those three
objectives. Isolating the Palestinian Authority is not necessarily
the best way of achieving that that government adheres to those
principles.
Q110 Chairman: Presumably the international
community, and certainly the Israeli Government, have taken a
view, partly political, namely you have to jump through these
hoops to be acceptable, but partly pragmatic, which says, "If
we give money to the Palestinian Authority under Hamas, that money
will go to terrorist organisations to promote hostile acts".
That essentially is the argument. The practical question, and
I do not know if you have an answer to it, is: if you accept at
all that that is a legitimate concern, what alternatives to funding
the Palestinian Authority do you think are open to the international
community that would at least address the poverty problem?
Mr Leach: To pursue the earlier
question, in the light of what you have just mentioned, I think
the substantial amount of money that has been spent on supporting
the Office of the President, €12 million I believe, is testament
to the fact that resources could have been put into transparent
mechanisms if the concern was about the misuse of money. What
we are concerned about is that by withholding aid altogether and
then supplying inadequate amounts in substitution for the amounts
that had been paid and also paying them late so that there is
a lag in payments, it is obviously that there is going to be an
impact on ordinary people, given that it is the salaries of 150,000
workers or more that have been most obviously hit by the withholding
of aid.
Mr Grunwald: The suspension of
aid is held up as an important factor, and in many ways it is,
but let us not forget that the suspension of aid is something
that happened comparatively recently. If we are really concerned
about understanding the problems that face the Palestinians, then
we have to go back and we have to look at what has happened to
all of the many, many millions of dollars, euros, pounds, whatever,
that have been given by many organisations as aid to the Palestinians
and the uses to which that has been put. The suspension of aid
may be a factor but it is not perhaps as important as the misuse
of earlier funds, the fact that they have not gone to the purpose
for which they should have been used, which was the alleviation
of Palestinian poverty, proper development within the Palestinian
Territories, because of widespread corruption. I have to say that
on our part we can understand why the international community
felt it necessary to lay down the three conditions that have already
been referred to, but equally we would hope that the international
community, and the British Government in particular, would find
a way of ensuring that funding does get through where it is most
needed, but also where proper account can be made of how that
money is used, so that we know that it is used for the purpose
for which it is intended.
Q111 Joan Ruddock: On the point that
you have just made about corruption, is it not generally accepted
that Hamas was elected because it was anti-corruption?
Mr Grunwald: There is a strong
feeling, as I understand it, that voting for Hamas was not necessarily
a positive move, voting for everything that Hamas stood for, but
it was certainly a stand against the endemic corruption that had
been allowed to flourish within the Palestinian Authority, yes.
The point I am making is that it is wrong to assume that the appalling
condition of the Palestinians has only come about because aid
has been suspended. It may have been exacerbated by that, but
it is an underlying problem that has existed for many, many reasons
for far too long.
Q112 Joan Ruddock: My point is perhaps
that the people themselves sought to address that in the way that
they democratically elected the Palestinian Authority?
Mr Grunwald: They may have done.
Q113 John Battle: I was going towards
the analysis of the causes but could I continue to focus for a
few moments on the reality of the situation now for people who
need a livelihood. I wondered if I could ask about the Temporary
International Mechanism. We have had DFID and FCO officals before
us putting great store on the Temporary International Mechanism
and saying that that would work. What is your assessment of that
Temporary International Mechanism? Was it implemented properly?
Are there sufficient funds available through it? What is your
view now of TIM, as it is euphemistically called?
Mr Leach: May I begin on the answer
to that? With no disrespect to officials responsible for implementing
the mechanism, we have to be careful not to get locked in a pernicious
argument about an instrument that is likely to result in problems
either way. If you limit the Temporary International Mechanism,
then it means that there will be more people who suffer because
there is not enough money going through the system. If you expand
it, you erode Palestinian institutions further. Our concern is
that we do not get locked into a discussion about an instrument,
which was faulty from the beginning, conceptually, and inappropriate
and unlikely to deliver the result, and recognised to be unlikely
to deliver, the result for which it was intended. We consulted
with a wide range of officials from the international community,
including people in the Foreign Office, and we made our feelings
known publicly in a letter addressed to the Quartet about the
risks of the TIM.
Q114 John Battle: Could I push this?
I think the figure that the Secretary of State gave in an answer
to a written question in Parliament on 20 October suggested that
TIM is functioning and that under Window III payments are now
being delivered to 98,000 individuals. So that would be up since
we have the submission from yourselves. Do you think that the
delivery of payments is improving? Is it less? Are those facts
wrong?
Mr Leach: I am not disputing those
facts as stated here, but I think the point is that only about
30% of workers who were formerly receiving salaries have received
payments under that. That means a consequential increase of five
times on people who are dependent on those salaries. However well
it has been working to date—and I want to stress the point
about a lag in payments, which I think has had further impacts—I
would say that it is far from adequate.
Q115 John Barrett: Can I raise this
more specifically under Window II, which is for energy utilities
and fuel, there have been EU reports about difficulties of fuel
being supplied into Gaza. Could anyone say how well fuel distribution
has been managed under Window II and the impact of the lack of
fuel into the area?
Mr Bell: I would be quite happy
to say a little bit about the impact. I would not go into a lot
of detail in terms of the Temporary International Mechanism in
the way that Oxfam have. I would say that the impact has been
critical in the sense that there have been huge shortages. For
example, Nahal Oz, which is the pipeline crossing between Israel
and Gaza, has indeed been open for some of the time, but it is
worth noting that the estimated daily needs of diesel in Gaza—and
obviously that is critical at a time when electricity supplies
are sporadic and difficult—are 700,000 litres. In July 2006,
the average volume of daily imports through that crossing was
only 205,000 litres. The knock-on effect is obvious in terms of
the way in which people manage. It is very easy to look at the
hospitals and the municipal buildings and see how life is difficult
for them, but in terms of the poorer sections of society, we are
looking at a situation where people's diet is greatly affected
in the sense that they certainly cannot run any form of refrigeration
that is reliable. Suffice to say that all supplies, not just diesel
and petrol, are very difficult to plan for and guarantee in Gaza,
given the way in which the crossings close. Again, I am not putting
a reason on why those crossings are closed. I am merely pointing
out the humanitarian impact of the crossings being closed; the
local population do suffer a great deal. Just one last point on
the crossings, the Karni crossing, which is the main commercial
crossing for both humanitarian supplies and goods, between January
and August of this year was closed for 42% of the time. Obviously,
for more than 50% of the time it was open, but it is very difficult
to plan, in terms of the economy, for your main lifeline with
the rest of the world with it not being open.
Mr Grunwald: May I just say that
it seems to us that the Temporary International Mechanism is one
way round the situation which the election of Hamas has put everybody
into. It is the sort of undertaking of which we ought to see more
because it is a way of ensuring that monies get directly to where
they are needed, which of course means that there is less likelihood
of their being diverted to uses that I am sure no-one in this
room would wish them to be put to. It is something which we all
hope is only going to be temporary, but it is something for which
the British Government is to be commended for having participated
in and perhaps it needs to be expanded to ensure that more funds
get more directly to where they are needed. If I can come back
to the question of the crossings, of course the crossings into
Gaza are a very serious issue. They are vital in every sense.
I do not dispute the figure that you have just been given, but
the Committee has to be aware and must take note of why the crossings
are closed. They are closed, as we understand it, for security
reasons, and often for good reason.
Q116 Chairman: We want to explore
the crossings issue in a bit more detail in a moment. We will
come back to it.
Mr Leach: May I add an answer
to John's question about the impact on fuel? We know from the
Union of Health Workers Committee that something like 300 litres
a day of fuel has been supplied under the TIM but that an additional
400 litres are needed each day, so there is clearly a shortfall
with consequential impacts on health services. To add to the earlier
point made by William, the non-payment of salaries has effects
on the supply of services more generally because, for instance,
prior to the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, something like 95%
of household water bills were being paid, and now something like
only 25% of water bills are being paid. That means that there
is not money in the system to pay workers, therefore services
do not get supplied, and therefore the lack of fuel adds to a
declining situation, a deteriorating situation.
Q117 John Barrett: Can I move on
to the supply of health care and supplies to hospitals? Evidence
given to us by UNICEF[2],
says that effectively Window I, which covers these basic health
supplies, was not operating at all. I wonder if you have any comments
on the obstacles towards Window I being effective.
Mr Leach: We know from some agencies
in Belgium that a partner organisation of theirs has experienced
difficulties because of having rapidly to scale up activity to
meet an influx of cases which happen. I think if Window I has
been ineffective, then Non-Governmental Organisations have had
to come in and fill the gap and they have not had the resources
to be able to do so.
Dr Karanasou: I would like to
raise a concern not so much in the context of the quantities of
money given through TIM but about the way aid is channelled at
present through the Palestinian President's Office. President
Mahmoud Abbas is an elected President but he is also the Deputy
Chairman of a political faction, Fatah, who lost the election.
Our concern is that by channelling aid through the President's
Office, aid can become a tool to exacerbate intra-Palestinian
tensions and conflict.
Chairman: Can I stop you there? I think
John Bercow is going to explore that. It might be helpful if John
puts that question and then you come back on it.
Q118 John Bercow: I am interested
in the mindset that produces the initial response that you have
just offered. I would like to approach the issue from the vantage
point not of what might be intra-Palestinian rivalries or tensions
but from what I should have thought was the principal purpose
of the provision and the funding, namely its efficacy or otherwise
in meeting the needs of the people in whose interests it is provided.
That really was what underlay the question that I was about to
put, and will put, partly to William though others may wish to
come on this. That is: what assessment has Christian Aid made
of the likely impact of channelling funding, I think so far intended
to be the tune of about €10 million through the Office of
the President, and why do you regard, as you apparently do, the
building up and the promotion of parallel institutions as an inherently
negative development?
Mr Bell: I think the problem that
needs to be addressed here is: how temporary is temporary? Over
the last 12 years or so since the establishment of the Palestinian
Authority, many, many millions, indeed probably billions, of taxpayers'
money from this country and around the world has gone into attempting
to develop a Palestinian Authority with a government that is able
to deliver vital services to its people. As the Board of Deputies
has pointed out, and we would not disagree with it, that government,
unfortunately, was one characterised by patronage and corruption,
which did very little actually to serve the needs of the people.
We do not dispute that. However, there were good examples of where
certain ministries of that Palestinian Authority were beginning
to address the needs of the population, notably in health and
in some cases education. There was a relationship being developed
with civil society that was becoming healthier. It is impossible
to look at the Temporary International Mechanism now from outside
the political establishment that Palestine is; namely, that the
President's Office, as my colleague has correctly said, belongs
to one particular political movement that was particularly sore
at losing an election which many others saw as inevitable and
perhaps just as a result of having been corrupt. I think that
if we go along with the idea of funding everything through the
President's Office, we undermine the opportunity for the Palestinian
political establishment actually to develop in a meaningful way
that responds to the democratic needs of those people. We are
seeing externally, whatever our motives may be, and I am not suggesting
that the motives of the British Government are anything other
than to try to address the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian
population, that one of the inevitable side-effects of this type
of channelling will be to exacerbate the rivalry between Fatah
and Hamas, which unfortunately we have seen and many predicted,
and many predict, will get much worse—rivalry which is resulting
in open warfare on the streets, certainly in Gaza, but to a degree
elsewhere. Anything that exacerbates that is not in the long-term
interests certainly of the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian
people but also it does not, in a sense, serve the actual peace
process that both the Palestinians and Israelis sorely need.
Dr Karanasou: I want to continue
the point I wanted to make earlier that it is not only that aid
is in danger of exacerbating an existing political conflict, since
the money is channelled through the leader of a political faction,
after all, which is engaged in a bitter political struggle with
the party that has won the election, but also this practice contradicts
one of DFID's policy goals as expressed in a recent conflict policy
paper, which has been opened up for public consultation and to
which Quaker Peace and Social Witness has submitted a response.
This paper states that development aid influences the political
dynamics of conflict. It can, for example, introduce resources
that hold the power relationships in ways that fuel local tensions.
Under policy goal III, it states that it will minimise the potential
for worsening conflict by making sure that all our development
work takes full account of its potential impact on conflict dynamics.
Later it states: All our efforts to promote development must ensure
that they do not exacerbate conflict and that, where possible,
they try to prevent violent conflict. Unfortunately, this does
not seem to be happening with this practice.
Q119 John Bercow: I understand the
force of the argument and it may well be that it is valid. I would
like to pursue the issue slightly further by seeking to establish
whether the logical conclusion of the remarks that you have both
made is that no such funding should go through the Office of the
President. So that all angles are explored and the voice of the
Devil's advocate is heard, can I put to you the question: is it
not above all important that the aid provided should be effectively
used? That is a more important consideration than the avoidance
of internecine arguments. Therefore, if there is not to be what
might be called a rival or competitive dilemma of funding through
the Office of the President as a potential counterweight to provision
to the Palestinian institutions, what other means are there, other
than external controls I suppose, to incentivise the effective
delivery of aid by the Palestinian institutions themselves?
Mr Bell: That might be true if
it were not for the possibility, and I think a strong possibility
in this case, that it is exactly the internecine conflict that
you refer to that is one of the reasons that makes it very difficult
to make aid effective. It is the violence that is produced as
a result of that. The long-term needs and where, as NGOs and we
as British taxpayers and the Government, we have to focus is how
can we get these two parties, and by that I mean Israelis and
Palestinians, back onto a peace process that will deliver both
development within the Occupied Territories themselves and, as
importantly and critically, security for both Israelis and Palestinians
because at the moment both security and development are sorely
lacking. I am not sure whether the channelling of aid through
the President's Office is going to address that problem. As you
say, that has to be, as development people, our primary objective.
Mr Leach: Can I add to the answer?
We too would not argue against the establishment of an effective
executive, but we would argue that without effective operational
ministries, you will not get effective assistance. It is ordinary
people who will pay the consequence. That fuels issues about faction
but also representation or the ability to represent democratically
and effectively, which further undermine security and stability.
Our concern is about setting up vicious circles which cannot be
broken and which cannot lead to the outcome that I know we four
support.
Chairman: I think the thrust of Mr Bercow's
question is that we are genuinely looking for help in this. We
can all have grand theories about the status of the problem and
what might or might not happen, but, as an International Development
Committee, we are also looking at if we are putting money into
it, will it get it to the right people. It does not stop us having
a debate about whether or not we should recognise that Hamas needs
to be treated as a Palestinian Authority and not an add on.
1 Ev 99 Back
2
Ev 188 Back
|
