Humanitarian aid for Palestinians has always been a macabre game which the international community has played so well, to the point that aid and death have become intertwined. Not only did the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) face Israel’s political violence while forced to remain steeped in a neutrality clause. To ensure further restrictions on humanitarian aid supplies and delivery of services, Israel banned aid agencies from operating in Gaza, subject to the submission of staff members’ personal details and political affiliations. In Israel’s narrative, humanitarian aid is designated as terror. In the international community’s narrative, humanitarian aid is an escape clause from political accountability. 

Israel’s High Court of Justice recently halted the government’s ban on 37 NGOs although it specified, “Without taking any position, a temporary interim order is hereby issued.” The case is still being considered, and humanitarian aid is still not considered a basic right. Then again, in a colonial context, what does colonialism consider to be a human right? 

READ: UK funded Israeli report on alleged sexual violence used to justify Gaza genocide

Athena Rayburm, executive director of AIDA, was quoted as stating that the court’s decision was “a step in the right direction – with a long, long way to go.”

Statements do not even reflect the Palestinian reality of hunger and deprivation; they merely reflect the bureaucracy of colonial violence and international apathy to intervene.

Statements do not even reflect the Palestinian reality of hunger and deprivation; they merely reflect the bureaucracy of colonial violence and international apathy to intervene.

Setting up a failed paradigm is enough investment for the international community. 

Meanwhile, since Israel and the US commenced their strikes on Iran, humanitarian aid was again conditioned upon security narratives. Israel closed border crossings and Palestinians again faced another round of humanitarian aid deprivation. Today Israel said it would allow a “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into Gaza.  Today Israel said it would allow a “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into Gaza. So while Palestinians in Gaza are immediately starving, gradual humanitarian aid will purportedly solve hunger. The UN, as futile as its presence and statements are, advises for immediate reopening of the border crossings and the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, but the rhetoric is not taken seriously, not even by the institution itself. 

The Palestinian people are constantly on the brink of a new wave of political violence that suppresses humanitarian aid. Since humanitarian aid is never given priority, and functions as impunity for political actors, why is the paradigm not exposed for the sham it was meant to be? The concept of aid was always temporary alleviation, but the paradigm does not factor in the permanence of war, political violence and colonialism. It does not even factor in genocide and the ways in which Israel can continue annihilating Palestinians with the same level of scrutiny the international community allows for normalised international law violations such as forced displacement. 

If the international community has the capacity for colonialism, genocide and war, how does it not have the capacity for humanitarian aid? Political rhetoric will attempt to convince the public that attention is by rotation, immediacy and urgency, and that Iran now takes precedence. But decades of Zionist colonialism are enough to contradict the mainstream narratives. Palestinians themselves can contradict the political rhetoric; it is just that they are forbidden the space to do so. Forbidden by the dynamics of political violence and a failed humanitarian paradigm. 

BLOG: Reconstructing the details of Israel’s obliteration of Palestinians

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

© Middle East Monitor