Matt Frei: Emily Thornberry, first of all, your reaction to what’s happening in Gaza? If UNWRA cannot operate in Gaza and there’s some debate about to what extent they can’t on the ground, how disastrous do you think that would be?
Emily Thornberry: It simply has to be able to operate in Gaza. I mean, there are no ifs or buts. UNWRA is the organisation that educates the children, that runs the clinics, that organises the aid. There are 13,000 people who work for UNWRA and I think 19 of them were accused by the Israelis of behaving in a completely partisan and wrong way. But there has been an inquiry. That has been dealt with and frankly, there is no other organisation but UNWRA that can do the sort of work that needs to be done, that must be done in Gaza.
Matt Frei: The Biden administration stopped funding for UNWRA almost exactly a year ago. Trump’s new ambassador at the UN will say that that ban will continue after March, when it was supposed to expire. The British government has said they support UNWRA. What do you think we should do? Can we fill the hole that’s left by America refusing to send over the dollars?
Emily Thornberry: I don’t think that we can completely fill the hole, I think, but the hole has to be filled. I think that today there was an announcement in parliament. There was a match, there was a large increase in the amount of aid going into Gaza, which I think then ups the amount of aid that Britain has given to Gaza to about £126 million or something in the last year. And we’re working with the Jordanians to make sure the aid is getting into northern Gaza, because that’s the route that the Jordanians are going to take, and it seems that many of the trucks are getting through.
But one thing that isn’t happening, is that there continues to be a pettiness and the silliness when it comes to letting tents in. Tents and sleeping bags, which obviously people desperately need. They’ve come back to their homes, their homes don’t exist. They need to have somewhere else that they can live. There is also, as was referred to in your piece, an awful lot of unexploded ordnance out there, which is really dangerous and needs to be cleared. And again, the Israelis are not being helpful when it comes to the sort of work that needs to be done and the sort of equipment that needs to be brought into Gaza in order to make sure that that’s cleared.
“It has been settled British policy for decades that there should be a two state solution.”
– Emily Thornberry MP
Matt Frei: As you said at the beginning of the interview, you’ve just come back from Jordan. We know that President Trump has been on the phone to Jordan and Egypt, telling them repeatedly about his plan to ‘clear out’, his words, the Gaza Strip and move the Palestinians who live there, who still regard it as home, to Jordan and to Egypt. That’s a massive question mark hanging over all of this, isn’t it?
Emily Thornberry: Yeah, there needs to be a peace settlement for Gaza and for the West Bank. There needs to be in my view, in the view of my committee, a rebuilding of Gaza. Now, the question is, how do we do that if there can’t be a guarantee that it is not going to get bombed again in three or four years time? So it has to be tied into a proper peace deal, which means that there has to be a really solid path for the Palestinians towards their own state. And if that does happen, then I think that money will go in for the rebuilding of Gaza. Now, Donald Trump also says that he wants there to be a regional deal. And part of that regional deal really can’t hold together, in my view, without there being justice for the Palestinians and a Palestinian state. Everything will be undermined by it.
Matt Frei: Yeah, but what he’s talking about is wholesale ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. And he’s still talking about it.
Emily Thornberry: Yeah, I think that we just simply cannot agree to that. And the Palestinians won’t agree to that. What needs to happen is that there needs to be..
Matt Frei: And will Britain tell him, will the British government stand up to Donald Trump and say, ‘we also don’t agree to this’?
Emily Thornberry: I would certainly expect them to.
Matt Frei: But they might not.
Emily Thornberry: I would certainly expect them to. It has been settled British policy for decades that there should be a two state solution, and that state for the Palestinians is Gaza and the West Bank. And that should be the whole of the West Bank and it should be along the ‘67 borders. That has been settled policy in Britain and frankly, settled policy internationally. And until someone comes up with a better idea, that is what the international consensus is. And it is not a better idea simply to clear the Gaza Strip. It simply isn’t.
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