Wael Badran (Abu Dhabi)
Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Emergency Humanitarian Coordinator, praised the humanitarian role played by the United Arab Emirates in providing relief and humanitarian support in the Gaza Strip, and its efforts to resolve conflicts and meet the needs of those suffering from them.
In an exclusive interview with Al-Ittihad, Griffiths explained that the UAE has a unique ability to reach and help people in conflict zones anywhere in the world.
He said: Based on my experience in cooperation with the UAE, it has complete knowledge of matters and a very practical and positive ability to solve problems, pointing out that Abu Dhabi has a variety of competencies and resources to implement humanitarian projects.
He added: “The UAE, as a donor country, provides humanitarian aid in an amazing way, and I remember clearly after the two earthquakes that struck Syria and Turkey last year, that the UAE sent more than 50 air shipments of aid very quickly in the first few days to both Syria and Turkey.”
He continued: “The UAE has a unique ability to deliver what is needed on time and urgently, and it did that in the Gaza Strip, and it is still doing that there.”
Regarding the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, Griffiths warned that there is no sufficient amount of aid reaching the Strip, and there is not enough fuel inside to transport aid to the people who left Rafah.
He explained that more than 800,000 of them have so far left Rafah in the last ten days, and this is an unusual number, and it is unreasonable that the two land crossings to southern Gaza, the Rafah crossing and Kerem Abu Salem, are closed or that aid cannot be delivered through them.
He continued: “Private sector supplies pass through the Kerem Abu Salem crossing, but it is very expensive for the people who really need aid and are in dire need of urgent assistance,” so the situation cannot be worse than that.
The United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs noted that humanitarian aid arrived by sea via the floating dock in the first two days of its operation, and that was a few days ago, but most of it did not reach the warehouses, adding: We were not able to reach our warehouses in Rafah, and the military operation is approaching. From our team there little by little as the battles move towards the west.
Griffiths renewed the warning that famine in the Gaza Strip seems almost inevitable, because if there is no food, we can be sure that people will die from hunger and diseases that accompany famine.
Regarding UNRWA stopping providing aid in the city of Rafah, he indicated that there are negotiations with the Israeli and American sides, and other parties, on how to safely deliver aid to those in need, indicating that the military operation in Rafah makes it difficult for UNRWA to OCHA and other United Nations agencies carry out their tasks.
Griffiths added: “We support large United Nations agencies, as well as international non-governmental organizations, in addition to local organizations that are making efforts to save lives on the front lines.”
He warned that the World Health Organization’s supplies in Gaza were running out, saying: “I’m afraid to think what this will end up with… but what we know is that if the aid program is not resumed soon, we will see dire consequences that we have not yet seen in Gaza.”
He said: We are negotiating with the Israeli side and others to obtain safe roads, and we are negotiating to open land crossing points from Kerem Shalom and Rafah, and on the beach we receive aid when it arrives via the floating dock.
He added: We support food and medical operations, operations to provide drinking water, and humanitarian aid in general. We also mobilize funds from all sides to pay the costs of all of this, and we sound the alarm that all of this is doomed to failure at the present time, if a ceasefire is not achieved.
He said that the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is racing against time to avoid a painful fate for 800,000 people in southern Gaza and 1.1 million people in the north, adding: A hospital in the north was attacked and all patients and staff were forced to flee under bombardment.
He pointed out that there are talks with the Israeli army about how to improve the security situation for aid workers, and to search for new and safer ways that we can actually use to transport supplies, for example across the shore of that floating dock, so that we can transport aid safely at this time, perhaps unlike what was before. It happened two days ago. We talked to them about the necessity of opening the crossings.
He stressed that without opening the crossings, people will die, and people may even die due to food shortages, as we cannot reach our warehouses and there are fewer and fewer quantities of food on the market. It is clearly a very tragic situation.
He pointed out that it is good for private sector trucks to pass, but they bring supplies to the market that most people cannot afford, while aid is free and in these circumstances it must be given priority.
On the funding front, Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Humanitarian Coordinator, said: Of course we always need funding and this is a common problem, but let’s put that aside for now and look at Gaza.
He added: We have an immediate problem, which is opening the crossings and providing aid to people who have now been displaced more than 6 times in various parts of the Strip, adding: “But there is something else that I think is no less important than that, which is giving hope to the people of Gaza that there is a future waiting for them. He continued: “I realize, based on my experience extending over 50 years in dealing with wars and conflicts around the world, that when hope dies, people die with it because the steadfastness necessary to survive these tragedies perishes without hope.”
Griffiths stated that the League of Arab States recently discussed, during the Arab Summit in Bahrain, the revival of hope and the focus once again on the two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority managing the Gaza Strip, and this is of course what we believe to be true as well.
He continued: Let us give the people of Gaza hope, and let us not leave them not knowing where their children will find a place to live next, while we do not know when more than 800,000 children who did not go to school in Gaza during the past seven months will regain their education… Hope is no less important than Aid.
Regarding his resignation by the end of next month, Griffiths said: “I am not involved in the process of choosing my successor, but I know that the Secretary-General of the United Nations has called for nominations, stressing the importance of choosing a suitable person.”
He said: “The world has never suffered from a humanitarian crisis as it is suffering now. We have more than 100 conflicts around the world, and almost none of them have been resolved,” adding: “Even in Yemen, where we hoped to see progress in resolving it, that has now happened.” “is in danger, which means that the humanitarian response to crises has become essential for the world.”
He continued: So I hope that my successor, and I am sure that this will happen, will be someone who can respond to crises, and do so with the consensus of the humanitarian community.
Griffiths concluded his dialogue with the “Union” by calling on the world to adhere to international law, which binds us and holds us all accountable, saying that the world must “stop bombing hospitals, bombing and killing humanitarian relief workers, and killing journalists… Adhere to the law and maintain peace.”
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