00:00Jonathan Fowler is the spokesperson for the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees and joins us now.
00:06Jonathan, there is so much murkiness around what food's going where, how it's getting through.
00:12I wonder if you could give us your understanding of how much food is getting through
00:15and whether it's actually reaching the people who are most in need.
00:21Thank you for having me on the programme.
00:24Murkiness is indeed the word.
00:26I mean, this is an utter humanitarian tragedy.
00:30It remains the case.
00:32The amount of food that has got in over recent days is, I mean, some are describing it as a drop in the ocean,
00:38but that would be a massively over-generous description of what has got in.
00:42You know, I mean, it's, it's, we need to be able to get in five to six hundred trucks a day
00:48to meet the minimum survival needs of the population of the Gaza Strip.
00:53That has not been happening.
00:54So, I mean, a tiny amount already, the kind of aid that's been allowed in, basically just flour.
01:00I mean, the needs are overwhelming.
01:02You know, that, that in itself is a commodity which is not enough.
01:05So insufficient quantities of, um, and restricted items, you know,
01:10basically restrictions on what could be brought in.
01:13And beyond that, it's also extremely difficult to distribute anything, um, beyond, uh, you know,
01:19further north than Karniunis, which is, it's kind of in, it's in the south of the Gaza Strip.
01:23So, you know, the, the needs are not being met, um, the aid needs to flow.
01:29It needs to flow in an unhindered manner, and this needs to happen immediately.
01:33There, there, there's no doubt about that whatsoever.
01:36Logistically, who is in charge of the food once it gets into Gaza?
01:41And what is the role of an organization such as yours, if any?
01:44Well, we are the largest United Nations humanitarian, uh, agency on the ground in the Gaza Strip.
01:52We have around 12,000 operational staff.
01:55And, uh, I, I want to underscore that our staff are working at an immense risk to their lives.
02:00Tragically, more than 300 of our staff have been killed, um, all too often along with the members of their families.
02:06So, I just want, want, want to, to underscore and flag that for your viewers.
02:10Um, but, you know, what, what we're not able to do, because of Israeli restrictions on our operations,
02:17is we're not able to fully participate in, in, in the current aid operation, however feeble it actually is.
02:24I mean, we are standing ready to do our job of work.
02:27Um, humanitarian operations are a chain, are a chain involving all, all parts of the United Nations system.
02:33But we're actively shut out of this, not able to operate, um, at least not able to operate in terms of distributions.
02:40And, of course, we have the largest distribution network.
02:42All the other parts of the UN rely on our logistical chain to do that.
02:46Um, what we are able to do, um, fortunately, and we are able to continue certain aspects of our work,
02:52for example, we have 19,000 patients going through our clinics, medical, medical points,
02:57and being seen by our mobile medical teams, 19,000 every single day.
03:02Um, we have something in the order of 35,000 children who are receiving, um, some form of education from us.
03:08It's like a back to learning, psychological support for traumatized children, these kind of things.
03:14And we also have 100,000 people in our emergency shelters, the shelters being transformed schools, notably.
03:21Um, so we're still doing that work.
03:23The point is we're not allowed, able to play our full role because aid is not flowing in,
03:27but also because we have restrictions on our operations, which have been imposed as the result of Israeli legislation enforced since the end of January.
03:35That's interesting because, uh, what's happened overnight, Jake Wood, who was the CEO of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, he has quit.
03:43He says it's not possible to implement the Israeli plan, I think it's the Israeli-US-backed plan,
03:47and stick to his principles of neutrality and independence.
03:52So what does that mean for that Israeli-backed plan, and what is your response to the news of his quitting?
03:57Well, we, I mean, we had said, you know, from the very beginning, as did other parts of the United Nations,
04:04that there is such a thing as international humanitarian law.
04:07There is a system, um, which operates around the world, which is based on international humanitarian law.
04:14It's, I mean, reinventing the wheel is, is, is, is, is not correct, because it's not, it's not logical, as it were,
04:22but it's also, it goes against international humanitarian law to create something which is seen as an alternative,
04:27and as it turns out, a pretty dysfunctional alternative.
04:31I mean, without commenting on, on things that we're not involved in, you know, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,
04:36I mean, we, we, we had said that just because you put the name humanitarian into something,
04:41it doesn't make it necessarily compatible with international humanitarian law.
04:46And we had also said, as has the rest of the UN, you know, that the principles of humanity,
04:51neutrality, impartiality, and independence, they are paramount in aid operations,
04:56and nothing that we were seeing suggested they would be followed.
04:59So without commenting directly on this resignation, um, I mean, you can see the logic in, in, in his move.
05:05Thank you so much for speaking to us.
05:07Jonathan Fowler is the spokesperson for the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees.
