Cycle of violence in Mideast becoming immune to diplomacy

Peter Hansen, Commissioner General, UN Relief and Works Agency, for Palestine Refugees

After 16 months of bloody strife in the Middle East the Palestinian population is showing clear signs of distress. There has been a doubling of stillbirths in the West Bank, in Gaza 65 percent of the population is now living below the poverty line, school exam results have collapsed and there has been a dramatic upsurge in mental health problems.

The cycle of violence often seems immune to the efforts of mediators or the initiatives of visiting diplomats. Yet hopeless as it might seem the United Nations is calling on the international community not to give in to the temptations of disengagement. If there seem to be no immediate remedies on the political front, there remains a very direct impact the world can have on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the West Bank.

The tragic running total of deaths of course captures most headlines but the conflict has cast a wider shadow of misery across Palestinian society. There are now over 80 permanent military checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza.

Tight restrictions on freedom of movement, in addition to prolonged curfews, fighting in civilian areas, house demolitions and the destruction of agricultural crops, have exacted an alarming toll.

Over and above the loss of life, the strife means factories and farmers cannot get their goods to market; over 100,000 laborers have lost their jobs inside Israel; around 4,500 people have been made homeless and thousands of households have lost their only breadwinner to a disabling injury. Among the hardest hit have been the 1.5 million innocent and vulnerable Palestinian refugees who live in the territories.

So far, families have been able to survive by tapping their savings, borrowing from relatives, selling jewelry or buying on credit. But after 16 months of crisis the reserves are running dry. Even if peace breaks out tomorrow it will take many years for families to climb out from under the debt and destruction that have come hand in hand with violence.

According to a UN survey in October 2001, the conflict has cost the economy of the Palestinian territories as much as $3.2 billion -- or nearly 50 percent of total GDP. In all, 50 percent of all Palestinian households have seen their already-meager incomes halved.

In the third quarter of the year unemployment reached 31.5 percent in the West Bank and an astonishing 48 percent in the Gaza Strip where 65 percent of the population was living in acute poverty. These statistics will only have worsened in recent months.

It hardly needs stating that the prevailing widespread economic, social and psychological distress, with serious consequences on the population's health, is not fertile ground for the seeds of peace. Further deterioration in the living conditions of the Palestinian people -- the overwhelming majority of whom have nothing to do with the violence the world sees nightly on its television screens -- can only damage further the chances of an eventual settlement to the crisis.

The UN has a presence on the ground (see www.un.org/unrwa/emergency). That means there is an effective tool that the international community can use to immediately mitigate the damage caused by the conflict.

Since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the UN, in the form of the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), has been the embodiment of the international community's concern for the innocent victims of the conflicts that have blighted the Middle East.

Currently in the Gaza Strip there are 850,000 UN-registered refugees and in the West Bank there are 607,000. Even in peaceful times, the United Nations delivers health, education and relief services to half the population of the territories.

UNRWA has just launched an appeal which aims to raise $117 million to cover its ongoing emergency work in 2002. The funds will be used for emergency food aid, a job creation program, medical supplies, trauma counseling for children and other urgent needs like rebuilding demolished homes.

Faced with such a seemingly intractable conflict, growing political uncertainty and increasing instability, donor fatigue and despair are tempting responses. But they would be the wrong ones. Instead the world can act to show its concern for the innocent who have been injured and disabled, the families who have lost their breadwinner or their home and the children who have been traumatized by the everyday violence that blights their lives.