Should the UK provide £88m in public funding for humanitarian relief and recovery in Gaza?
The UK government announced an £88m package today for humanitarian relief and early recovery in Gaza and the West Bank. It will fund medical consultations for up to 900,000 people, rehabilitation for 1,000 children with blast injuries, clean water for 150,000, waste management for 900,000 and mental health support. This forms part of the £127m bilateral aid budget for the Palestinian territories in the current financial year following a policy reset towards Israel and Palestine.
4 Opinions
The British Army has stopped all non-critical collective training exercises until the end of the year to save £30m… But let’s send triple that to Palestine: a ‘state’ we now recognise without being able to define its borders, government, capital city - and where recent aid has just wound up with terrorists who hate us and wish us dead, only second in line behind the Jews.
AllyInternational aid should freeze, the UK cannot afford it.
Beyond the fiscal squeeze, delivering aid into active, chaotic conflict zones without rigorous distribution oversight inevitably risks supplies being commandeered or misdirected by armed actors. I would not be very confident in it reaching it's intended target.
Given that the super-majority of international funding going into the Palestinian Territories ends up being diverted toward Hamas and Fatah respectively, provision of any aid would need to be accountable and protected [ideally by UN troops] from militias which steal cash and use food and medicine as a tool of control.