Aid money follows the cameras, which is why Palestine is suffering so badly

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/12/aid-money-palestine-suffering

Version 0 of 1.

The tragedy unfolding in Syria has rightly stolen the international headlines. The sheer scale of the suffering cries out for coverage. The UN estimates that a third of the country has been displaced. We stopped estimating the death toll after it passed a staggering 100,000.

For UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), the agency that works with Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, the numbers have also been bewildering: 270,000 of our beneficiaries inside Syria have been displaced. The largest of the camps, Yarmouk in Damascus, once home to 160,000 Palestinians, has been reduced to rubble for the most part. In the face of this overwhelming emergency we have appealed to the donor community for more than $400m.

Aid money follows the cameras. Cameras follow conflict. Syria is no exception. Our emergency plan for 2014 is relatively well funded so far. The bad news is that we also have emergency programmes elsewhere, where need is profound and chronic but which are suffering from serious news fatigue: Gaza and the West Bank.

Gaza hit the headlines during the upsurge in fighting in the winter of 2008-2009 and then again in November 2012. For a brief few days the cameras were there to capture the Israeli attack and the rockets that flew towards Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The West Bank is even more severely "news fatigued". The occupation, now more than 45 years old, is hardly a news story, some would say.

UNRWA anticipates that this year's emergency work in those areas, , for which we need $300m, will receive just £120m from our mainly state donors. The consequences of this will be devastating on an individual level for our beneficiaries who already number among the most disadvantaged in the Middle East. At the macro level it is likely to have political ramifications, given that these are the populations which the current peace process needs to engage – a prospect that recedes with their continued economic disempowerment and consequent sense of desperation and isolation.

In Gaza, where UNRWA serves 1.2 million of the 1.7 million population, the shortfall in the emergency programme budget may be as high as $30m, which will have a devastating impact on people already restive after nearly seven years of economic strangulation caused by the Israeli blockade and the subsequent destruction of what had been a critical lifeline for many – the trade tunnels into Egypt.

UNRWA's food aid is likely to be the first casualty of our underfunded emergency programmes. In Gaza, our already suspended school feeding programme, which gives many of the quarter of a million children in our schools their first regular meal of the day, is likely to end. Moreover, we may have to end cash assistance for refugees who are still waiting for new homes following the two most recent rounds of fighting and last year's devastating floods.

Wider economic trends in Gaza offer little hope. Unemployment surged to a record high of 38.5% in the last quarter of 2013, up from 27.9% in the second quarter and 32.5% in the third. Refugees being additionally vulnerable were disproportionally hit, with unemployment among refugee communities at more than 40.9% at the end of last year.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, current underfunding projections would necessitate a significant reduction in food assistance at a time when food insecurity is rising, with more and more families – especially inside refugee camps – requiring assistance to meet their basic food needs.

When economic forecasts dictate that levels of need will rise, UNRWA's emergency work with the increasingly needy will likely be cut back. And make no mistake, such cuts have the potential to cause instability in an already volatile region, and in the very places where the current peace initiative needs to take hold. There was acrimony and unrest during the recent strike among UNRWA's workers in the West Bank when refugee communities saw their services withheld; there have been violent protests against service cuts around an already unstable Gaza Strip.

The only way of dealing with these man-made emergencies is to get rid of the underlying causes: the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the closure of Gaza which is stifling the economy, increasing poverty and unemployment, and forcing even greater dependency on aid provided by the international community. The need for emergency interventions would diminish dramatically if Gaza was opened up for normal business and trade.

Moreover, UNRWA's assistance has the capacity to instill a degree of calm and stability into the lives of some of the most desperate and disadvantaged communities in the Middle East. A relatively small investment now could be of lasting value and a vital peace dividend at a crucial time. Few doubt that a failure to deal with the growing sense of isolation and disempowerment among some of the most desperate communities around Israel is likely to have far-reaching political consequences. And that really is a price no one wants to pay.