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Kerry pledges more U.S. aid to rebuild Gaza Kerry pledges more U.S. aid to rebuild Gaza
(about 3 hours later)
CAIRO — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Cairo early Sunday to meet with his counterparts from European and Arab nations to talk about rebuilding the ravaged Gaza Strip, but many donors are reluctant to contribute for fear that Hamas and Israel will fight again and any reconstruction will just be knocked down in the next year or two. CAIRO — As nations and organizations began lining up to help rebuild the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, representatives of several major donors said Sunday that this is the last time they will pay and urged Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate a final settlement leading to two separate states.
In his opening remarks, Kerry announced the U.S. would send an additional $212 million aid to help with relief and reconstruction of Gaza, bringing the U.S. contribution to more than $400 million. Appearing in Cairo at a conference of more than 50 donor nations, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced that the United States would contribute an additional $212 million to Gaza reconstruction. The Americans have already sent $118 million. Coupled with $84 million given to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which cares for Palestinian refugees, the total U.S. commitment to rebuilding Gaza now stands at more than $400 million.
“This immediate money will mean immediate relief, reconstruction,” he said. “This money will help meet the Palestinana Authority’s budget needs. This money will we hope help security and stability and economic development.”​ “The people of Gaza need our help, desperately — not tomorrow, not next week. They need it now,” Kerry said, explaining that the money would go toward the Palestinian Authority budget; toward distributing food, medicine and construction materials; and toward rebuilding Gaza’s damaged water and sanitation lines.
The new money is more than double the $118 million the U.S. already has paid for Gaza aid since the war this summer. The U.S. has also contributed $84 million to a U.N. relief agency in Gaza. The U.S. donation represents just 10 percent of the $4 billion the Palestinian Authority says will be needed over the next three years. The bulk of it is expected to come from oil-rich Arab states of the Persian Gulf region, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which compete for regional influence. On Sunday, the Qataris committed $1 billion to Gaza. The United Arab Emirates pledged $200 million.
Kerry also was expected to make a plea for Israel and the Palestinians to resume negotiations for a more lasting settlement, as a way to persuade skeptical donor nations that the projects they fund will not be destroyed. Israel and the Islamic militant movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, have fought three wars in six years and after each confrontation, the donors have been asked to pay for the damage. Gaza was pounded hard over the summer by Israel’s land, sea and air assault on what it said were Hamas targets in the enclave. It was the third war in less than six years between Israel and the Islamist militant movement that controls the Gaza Strip.
The U.S. contribution is a small share of the $4 billion the Palestinians say is needed for reconstruction of housing and infrastructure over the next three years. Many of the buildings and much of the infrastructure damaged or destroyed in the war had been paid for with international donations and must now be rebuilt.
Most of the money is expected to come from the oil-rich nations of the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who compete for regional influence in Arab affairs. According to the Palestinians, 2,145 people were killed in Gaza during the hostilities, including 581 children. The United Nations estimates that almost 70 percent of the dead were civilians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that 1,000 of those killed were “terrorists.”
The 50-day war in Gaza this summer was the most destructive yet — with an estimated cost of rebuilding three times worse than the 2008 war. The Palestinians say that 18,000 houses were destroyed in the bombing, rendering 100,000 people homeless. Gaza’s population is 1.7 million.
According to the Palestinians, 2,145 people were killed in Gaza during the hostilities, including 581 children. The United Nations estimates that almost 70 percent of the dead were civilians. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that 1,000 of the fatalities were “terrorists.” The United Nations reports that 40,000 people without homes are still be being sheltered in 19 U.N. schools in Gaza.
The Palestinians say that 18,000 houses were destroyed in the bombing, rendering 100,000 people homeless. The Gaza population is 1.7 million. The damage to Gaza includes telecommunications, schools, sanitation, mosques, hospitals and some of the territory’s largest factories. The Palestinians say that 20 percent of Gaza’s industrial enterprises were damaged or destroyed. Before the war broke out, more than 40 percent of the Gaza workforce was unemployed.
The United Nations reports 40,000 people without homes are still be being sheltered in 19 U.N. schools in Gaza. The Israelis say their military was forced to strike at or near schools and hospitals because Hamas was using the buildings — and the civilians in and around them — to hide rocket launchers. Israel says the war was started and prolonged by the more than 4,000 rockets fired by Hamas at Israeli civilians.
The destruction includes telecommunications, schools, sanitation, mosques, hospitals and some of the largest factories in Gaza. The Palestinians say that 20 percent of Gaza’s industrial enterprises were damaged or destroyed. Before the war broke out, more than 40 percent of the Gaza workforce was unemployed. Chris Gunness, a spokesman for UNRWA, called the $1.6 billion the agency is requesting “the largest single ask in UNRWA’s 64-year history. It’s unprecedented, reflecting the massive scale of destruction and the profound level of need the beleaguered people of Gaza are experiencing today.”
The Israelis say that their military was forced to strike at or near schools and hospitals because Hamas was using the buildings — and the civilians in and around them — as human shields to hide their rocket launchers. Kerry said Sunday that nobody wants to be back in two years talking about rebuilding Gaza again.
Much of the damaged infrastructure had been built with international aid. In some cases, buildings and infrastructure were restored only to be destroyed again. “We’ve got to find a way to get people back to the table and make tough choices,” he said. “Real choices. Choices about more than just a cease-fire. Even the most durable of cease-fires is not a substitute for peace.”
As part of the Palestinian request, the United Nations Relief Works Agency, known as UNRWA, is asking the donors for $1.6 billion. He devoted nine months of his time trying to secure a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians before negotiations collapsed in April amid finger-pointing between the two sides.
Chris Gunness, a spokesman for UNRWA called the figure “the largest single ask in UNRWA’s 64-year history. It’s unprecedented, reflecting the massive scale of destruction and the profound level of need the beleaguered people of Gaza are experiencing today.” Kerry and other U.S. diplomats said some progress was made in those secret talks, though Israel and the Palestinians never looked at maps to draw borders for a future state of Palestine. Kerry has said recently that he is willing to try again.
The Arab League had set a goal of $5 billion, an astronomical figure nobody expected to be approached. A sense of donor fatigue hangs heavy over the luxurious J.W. Marriott Hotel in Cairo’s modern, upscale Heliopolis neighborhood. Expectations are not high that the goal can be met, especially as nations face the prospect of economic slowdown in Asia and the euro-zone. “There is nothing sustainable about the status quo,” he said Sunday. “The underlying causes of suspicion and discontent that exist in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza can only be eliminated by solving the conflict itself.”
U.S. officials are stressing that it is necessary to break the pattern of war and reconstruction, and a return to negotiations that collapsed in the spring would send that signal. Israel drew pointed criticism from several of the initial speakers, who denounced its partial blockade of Gaza and its military occupation of the West Bank.
“I think that there’s a lot of discouragement around the world about where we are on efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I think people feel like they’ve lost some hope that that’s really going to be possible.” Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations, called Gaza “a tinderbox” and urged both sides to overcome their differences and end the conflict “once and for all.”
He said he was at the conference to “stand with the people of Gaza, who have endured a terrible summer of suffering.”
“Yet we must not lose sight of the root causes of the recent hostilities: a restrictive occupation that has lasted almost half a century, the continued denial of Palestinian rights and the lack of tangible progress in peace negotiations,” he said.
Ban made a passing reference to what Israel considers the fundamental cause of this summer’s war — rockets fired from Gaza into Israel — though he did not mention Hamas by name.
He called for Israel to lift its economic blockade on Gaza, for both sides to have their legitimate security concerns addressed, and for the establishment of a Palestinian state living in peace next to Israel.
Borge Brende, the foreign minister for Norway, which is co-hosting the conference with Egypt, made clear that European patience is wearing thin.
“It’s understandable for donors and taxpayers alike to ask why taxpayers should pick up the bill for what warring parties have torn down,” he said.
The commitment of donor nations should not be taken for granted, he said.
“We do not have time for the stars to align,” he said. “The people of Gaza cannot be held hostage to negotiations that may or may not produce the desired outcome.” Doing nothing, he said, “is the surest way of setting us up for another war a year or two down the road.
In recent weeks, many Israeli politicians have argued that the status quo with the Palestinians is not only sustainable but preferable for the time being. They say that they cannot be expected to negotiate a risky peace deal at a time of great turmoil in the Mideast and that the rise in militant Islam means that many Arab states have more to worry about than the Palestinians.
Relations between the two sides are at a low point. In an address before the U.N. General Assembly last month, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said he would seek a resolution from the world body calling for the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as it capital. He called on Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and its blockade of Gaza by December 2016.
The United States has threatened to veto such a resolution in the U.N. Security Council. The U.S. position is that the Palestinians will get their state only by direct negotiations with Israel and not through U.N. declarations.
Israel was angered by both the Palestinian approach to the United Nations and by the creation of a new Palestinian national reconciliation government that begins to mend a seven-year-long rift between Abbas and his more-moderate Fatah party, which has subscribed to a nonviolent approach, and Hamas, which Israel and the United States consider a terror organization.
Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi opened the conference by saying the rebuilding of Gaza requires the Palestinian Authority to reassert its full control over the coastal enclave. The new Egyptian regime loathes Hamas, which was born of Sissi’s archenemy, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Sissi, who had quietly pushed the Israeli government not to attend the conference out of concern that it would upset conservative gulf states, also asked Israel to accept the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers the hope of recognition for Israel by all Arab nations in exchange for a Palestinian state.
Booth reported from Jerusalem.Booth reported from Jerusalem.