International aid is the problem, not the solution, for Gaza
Michael Rubin
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Israel’s ground assault on the Gaza Strip has yet to begin, but already, politicians and liberals are demanding Israel pause its assault to enable humanitarian relief to flow into Gaza. Speaking on the floor of the Canadian Parliament, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared, “Canada is calling for unimpeded humanitarian access and a humanitarian corridor so that essential aid like food, fuel, and water can be delivered to civilians in Gaza. It is imperative that this happen.”
Pope Francis echoed such calls. “May humanitarian rights be respected above all in Gaza, where it is urgent and necessary to guarantee humanitarian corridors to help the entire population,” he said.
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On Oct. 14, just days after President Joe Biden threw unequivocal support to Israel, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan about how “to prevent the conflict from widening and to minimize the humanitarian costs of the war,” never mind Turkey’s consistent support for and sponsorship of Hamas.
Biden will continue to demand that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allow emergency aid to enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
The problem in Gaza, however, has seldom been a lack of aid. Beyond apocalyptic claims, Gaza was never a prison or concentration camp. Its population was not barely sliding by. It outperformed many countries such as India, Bosnia, Brazil, and oil-rich Azerbaijan in key health and welfare indicators. The Gaza Strip is dense, with around 15,000 people per square mile, but that is less dense than Tel Aviv (21,000 people per square mile), at which Hamas regularly launches missiles.
There are other reasons to be wary about international aid. Hamas rules Gaza with an iron grip. To channel assistance into Gaza while Hamas remains empowered is akin to trusting the North Koreans to distribute oil and food to citizens rather than to fuel their military. Then, there is the diversion of assistance in other ways. Hamas videos openly bragged about digging up water pipes to convert them to rocket launchers, and the Japanese aid logo marks Hamas sandbags. To bail Hamas out simply signals there will be no consequence for such diversion.
This brings us to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, founded in 1949. The UNRWA helped settle Palestinian refugees displaced in Israel’s War of Independence. Israel settled a near equal if not larger number of Jewish refugees, who today are fully integrated into the Jewish state. In 1951, UNRWA reported, “There must be a firm goal of terminating relief operations. Sustained relief operations inevitably contain the germ of human deterioration.”
Arab pressure interceded, as did the special definition of “refugee” that UNRWA adopted that the U.N. applies to no other people. To apply the UNRWA definition of refugee to those affected by the 1947 Partition of India, for example, would be to create, with a stroke of a pen, almost 300 million refugees today, each of whom would serve as a barrier to peace.
It is clear that UNRWA’s founders were correct. The organization erodes, if not denies, agency completely to Palestinians. As Biden grasps at Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi, and Palestinian Authority straws, he should reject a return to the status quo. UNRWA is a moral hazard. It has done more harm than good over its more than 70-year history.
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The best way to prepare Palestinians for true governance as part of a two-state solution would be to imbue them with responsibility for their fate. The international community’s rush to bail out every corrupt Palestinian leader and free them from the consequences of their decisions only signals that they can focus more on the ideological imperative to make war against Israel than to build up their own state and take care of their own people.
To provide humanitarian assistance today is akin to offering an alcoholic a bottle of vodka. It may quell an uncomfortable confrontation, but it does neither the alcoholic nor those forced to live around him any good. Let there be emergency relief only after Hamas suffers complete defeat.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.