Jonathan Fowler: It’s completely unclear. I mean, what is clear is that we, the international staff of UNRWA, had to leave the compound where we work in East Jerusalem under protest. I’ve just arrived in Amman in Jordan, after driving from East Jerusalem this afternoon. But frankly, we do not know what tomorrow is going to look like. Will we even be able to continue providing our services? We have zero idea and this is unacceptable.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: What about the medical services and the schools that UNRWA run?
Jonathan Fowler: This is the thing. I mean, there’s two laws that were passed by the Israeli parliament at the end of October that are scheduled to come into force tomorrow. One of them specifically bans operations by UNRWA on what Israel considers to be its sovereign territory, specifically in East Jerusalem this means that 70,000 patients, people who are the most vulnerable part of the population, Palestine refugees with no means to pay other forms of health care, they potentially lose their health care. We have over a thousand students in our education system in East Jerusalem. We don’t know what to tell them. We don’t know what to tell our parents. I mean, nobody, no organisation of any kind should be put in a situation like this. But this is where we are.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: What about the West Bank situation? I mean, you’ve got a lot of displaced people around Jenin at the moment. What’s going on there?
Jonathan Fowler: Exactly. I mean, this is where the other law becomes very problematic because the law, the second law, bans all contact between Israeli officials and people working for, with, or representing UNRWA. Now, the problem is we don’t actually know how contact is defined. Does that mean that our staff in the West Bank can’t move around precisely to help displaced people? You know, can we bring in the aid that’s necessary? How do we run our clinics? Can we bring in medicine? We have no idea.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: And what is the situation in Gaza right now?
Jonathan Fowler: We’ve got this window of opportunity offered by the ceasefire for which we are all of course incredibly thankful. Over the initial days after the ceasefire, we were able to bring in enough food for a million people. We’ve been able to keep humanitarian aid flowing. But we are actually the largest UN agency working in the Gaza Strip. We have around 5,000 operational staff able to continue functioning, doing their job of workers – as aid workers – on the ground. If UNRWA staff are not able to do their work, if we’re not able to coordinate our work with the Israeli authorities, then it really does not bear thinking about – the scenario is a nightmare scenario. The potential collapse of the humanitarian operation is there staring us in the face.