Six months after the world’s top diplomats met at Sharm el Sheikh to pledge massive amounts of assistance to war-torn Gaza, there is little on the ground to show that their commitment has had any effect. The magnitude of the devastation that descended upon the Gazan people earlier this year is difficult to overstate. The UN estimates that as many as 14,000 homes and 240 schools have been destroyed and too little has been done to alleviate the suffering of the nearly 1.5 million Palestinians who overcrowd the tiny strip of territory.
Indeed, between stringent Israeli controls on the entry of humanitarian aid and construction materials, Palestinian political disunity that complicates its delivery and the fickle commitment of the international community, the Palestinian people have been ill-served by the very people who profess to have their best interests at heart.
Of the $4.5 billion pledged, barely a few million have made it to Gaza. The lack of progress in Palestinian reconciliation talks sponsored by Egypt has been a fundamental obstacle to the delivery of aid. Fatah and Hamas both have claims to legitimacy and their interests will be difficult to reconcile lest they adopt some greater sense of purpose.
The international community is unwilling to provide assistance through Hamas for fear that it would prop up the Islamist movement and grant it legitimacy, so the hope was for a reconciliation and unity government to create spending mechanisms that would allay the fears of donors. But without reconciliation, the US, which had announced a $900 million aid package to Gaza, has diverted most of the money to shore up the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority of its ally Mahmoud Abbas.
Israel would have remained an obstacle to rebuilding Gaza but unfortunately that was to be expected. The combination of Palestinian turmoil, Arab inertia and western complacency should not be. Of course, donors have legitimate concerns. In the past, money has ended up in personal bank accounts rather than used for development, so it is no surprise that many countries, including the Gulf states, prefer to deliver projects themselves (schools, hospitals, infrastructure work) rather than wire huge sums of aid that have had a limited effect. But what is lost in this politicking is the sense of urgency that Gaza must provide. Six months since the summit at Sharm el Sheikh, there are promises to keep.
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