MEMO hosts former Commission General of UNRWA Karen Abu Zayd for a series of events

The Middle East Monitor is extremely pleased to have been able to host the former Commission General of UNRWA in the past three days for a series of public events. Karen Abu Zayd has had an extremely distinguished career working within the United Nations for many years and was an eminent academic for several years before that. She kindly agreed to fly to London especially to take part in a series of MEMO events this week including a Press Conference, a Parliamentary briefing and a public seminar in the University of Westminster. She also took part in an interview with the Middle East Monitor this morning which focused primarily on the issue of Palestinian refugees.

Karen utilised these opportunities to great effect bringing many extremely important issues relating to Palestine to the attention of the public. She described the ongoing problem of getting medical and humanitarian aid into Gaza as a result of the illegal Israeli blockade, and she described the terrible impact that this is having on the children of Gaza, including malnutrition and stunted growth. She urged people to look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to note that every single one of these rights is being denied to the Palestinian people as a result of Israel's restrictive and discriminatory policies. One reason it was so fascinating to listen to her was not just because she occupied such a key position in a high-ranking UN body but also because, having lived in Gaza for 9 years, she was able to speak from a position of practical experience of the situation on the ground as opposed to speaking from a purely academic perspective.

Following on from her very informative discussions and speeches over the last few days, MEMO sat down with Karen this morning and asked her to tell us a little more about the issue of Palestinian refugees and also more about her experiences in Palestine as a whole.


Below is the full interview transcript with Karen AbuZayd

HC: You have worked with refugees in many countries over the years, most notably with Ugandan, Chadian and Ethiopian refugees in Sudan, and then later in Namibia and then Sierra Leone. What do you think distinguishes the Palestinian refugee issue from all others?

KAZ: The main thing of course is the length of time they have been refugees. With every other refugee population, even the ones in Sudan in terms of the Ethiopians and Eritreans who have been there quite a long time, we knew that some day there would be a solution. There would be a political solution and the refugees would get to go home. In the case of the Palestinians we have no certainty about that. We don't know when, we don't know where, we don't know what is going to be the choice offered to them. What will they be allowed to do? When is that going to happen? Just a lot of uncertainty.


HC: The UN has upheld the principle of repatriation to resolve all refugee problems. Why has the Palestinian case been allowed to fester for six decades? 

KAZ: Well as far as we are concerned the same choices should be available to Palestinian refugees as to all other refugees around the world and these are the so called 'durable solutions'. Of course the first and preferred solution is for all refugees to return home; the second is for them to stay where they are in their asylum country, and the third, for a much smaller group of people, is to go somewhere else, but those are usually for special cases where they can't settle where they are.
With all refugees these choices depend on finding a political solution to the original problem and getting to the root causes and that is the same here but for Palestinians there hasn't been a solution because there is an on-again off-again peace process. That's one of the other differences with the Palestinian case. In other places when you start a peace process you usually finish the peace process. It all depends on finding a political solution.


HC: Since the demise of the UN Conciliation Committee for Palestine no international body has been mandated to facilitate the repatriation of the Palestinian refugees, why is that? 

KAZ: There are some powers that simply don't want it to be. It has not been dismantled or anything. It is still there. Its formation is there that one day we will have to use. They are the ones that gathered a lot of the early information of property claims and so on. It was set up decades ago. The Committee still exists but it's not active. That's why UNRWA has an element of a protective role because someone has to protect the refugees.
What I assume, and what everyone else assumes, is that once there is a peace settlement and the choices are given to the refugees, UNRWA will have to be very much involved because of its infrastructure and because it is there with 30,000 staff who are Palestinians and to help refugees not only to make their choices but then either to settle them or resettle them or to move them to wherever they are going to be. Palestinian refugees should have the same choices as every other refugee in the world and those options may include resettlement in a third country. Many of them may already be settled in third countries and may wish to establish that and then you will bring in an organisation like UNHCR who have experience in that. The whole question of compensation is also a very big one but that is not UNRWA's job so then you would have to have a special organisation possibly set up.


HC: Since the signing of the Oslo accords Israel has lobbied hard within the UN for the dismantlement of UNRWA, claiming that it is obsolete and irrelevant. Why should the agency be maintained? 

KAZ: It is not really Israel that has lobbied for it but more pro-Israelis or should I say anti-Palestinians. I'm sorry but UNRWA is there and it will be there until there is an agreed settlement of the issues and a successful conclusion to the peace process. Thereafter it will gradually fade itself out after doing what it can to help the implementation of the agreement for a couple of years. There are a lot of Israeli commentators who seem to think that if you get rid of UNRWA you get rid of the refugees. I've read several articles this week that say that but that is rather silly because we did not create the refugees and we don't perpetuate them. They are still going to be refugees, but they will be rather more miserable refugees, if we are not there and if it falls to somebody like Israel to provide the school and clinics and so on for them instead.
It is a debate that frequently takes place, should the NGOs pull out completely and then just see what happens but of course it is not viable.


HC: You mentioned in your speech yesterday that when you left your post in Gaza you had to leave all of your furniture and many of your own belongings behind because the Israeli blockade meant that there was no way to even get your own things out. What sort of difficulty is UNRWA having bringing in aid into Gaza? 

KAZ: To give just one example, we were finally allowed to bring in shampoo but when it arrived because it was bottles of shampoo with added conditioner they said we could not bring it in because shampoo was on the list of approved products but two-in-one shampoo with added conditioner was not on the list! There were three thousand or so items on the list of things that were allowed to be let into Gaza in the past and now there are only about 13. The purpose, Israel says, is to weaken Hamas. They want people to pay for their 'bad vote'. The fact that they think that that is going to work, that people will rise up and get rid of Hamas just so that they can get conditioner is not going to happen.
On the example of school desks that John Ging (the head of UNRWA in Gaza) told you about, they finally said that we could bring in furniture, so we said shall we bring it in fully made or bring it in bits and pieces and give the Palestinians jobs to assemble it. They said bring it in bits and pieces. But then they let us bring in the steel table legs for the desks but not the wooden tops!

HC: As a former head of UNRWA what steps did you initiate, if any, to enhance the agency's mandate? 

KAZ: UNRWA's very presence is protection and the provision of public services is to provide human rights for refugees and justice and so on in a very basic way. We protect and assist refugees and especially because of the public services we are more of a human development agency. The emergencies we do because we have to, it is extra, it is not our original mandate. I certainly spoke out a lot more on the rights issues of Palestinians and on the protection side. I think, like with other refugee agencies, it takes a particular time and place and persons to go public because refugees are often protected best by them being more invisible. Asylum countries don't always like refugees so it's better if they are not on the news and that sort of thing, but with Palestinians it was probably the thought of persons earlier that they could do the work better quietly but we are in a situation in the last few years that you can't be quite and you can't do your humanitarian work unless you stray a bit into saying solve these political problems. I mean how can we do our work if we can't get goods in? And that is a political issue and a political problem.

The other thing that happened under my watch is a major reform of the agency partly to do with the way the whole UN is going, in terms of decentralisation and giving more power to the directors in each field, in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and so on. Each field has different problems and different advantages. That's just in terms of approach. The more important thing was to expand our relationship with the donor community. We've always had a rather passive relationship where we met once or twice a year with the Advisory Commission board but what we did, which was a huge task which had to go through the General Assembly, was to double the size of the board and to make it a really engaged board that worked with us on our budget and on our programmes and we now have serious meetings and subcommittee meetings. It's now a very tough organisation that works with us and I think it has been very important.


HC: What are your fondest memories of your tenure as head of UNRWA? 

KAZ: My fondest memories are, of course, of the Palestinian people, my staff, and their strength and dignity and their courage in the face of terrible adversity.


HC: What are your worst memories of your tenure there?

KAZ: Just seeing the intransigence of the people who are against the Palestinians and the fact that they get away with it without our being able to do anything about it; and seeing the situation get worse all the time. Nothing has gotten better, it's just getting worse and worse every day.

HC: If the last three days are anything to go by, you are not really slowing down in terms of your commitment to Palestine despite your "retirement."

KAZ: Believe me it's a lot slower now but you can't leave the Palestine issue. I'm not actively searching for projects but have been asked to do a few. I'll be at The American University of Cairo to do some seminars over a few weeks and I'll be doing some other university related things. I came from academia before going to the UN so it's nice to go back in and have time to think and read.

HC: Do you think you will ever go back to visit Gaza?

KAZ: Oh for sure. Gaza was my base and my home for nine years and I have many friends there but there are still questions around access, difficulties getting in and difficulties getting out.

HC: The situation for Palestinians seems very dire right now. Do you see any hope for the future?

KAZ: Sure, even the developments this week and General Petraeus's recent statements, as well as Mullen's are interesting. It's all very significance and this will ultimately affect the American public and that is the only thing that will counter the AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) influence; for the people to rise up and say we are going to vote for these people anyway.

Download this interview transcript.