UNRWA official implies that Israel should be forced to buy goods from Gaza

The Huffington Post published an article a few days ago by Robert Turner, Director of UNRWA in Gaza.

He makes the incredible claim that Gaza is not getting enough media coverage. Turner admits he wants the media coverage of poor Gazans in order to raise more money:

It is impossible not to be touched by the apocalyptic scenes emerging from the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus, besieged and cut off for months. The images are at once epic and personal....While the cameras have followed the conflict as they ever do, aid budgets have followed the cameras. International funding abhors a news vacuum. Donors like their cash to be in the news headlines and so UNRWA's appeal to the international community to fund our emergency work in Syria to the tune of over 400 million U.S. dollars, has found a generous response among donor governments. That's the relatively good news and we are grateful.

The bad news is that UNRWA works in other places where, like Syria, there are emergencies that have become protracted, but from where, unlike Syria, the cameras have moved on. Gaza is one of those places.

Google News search for the past month finds Yarmouk mentioned about 5000 times in the media. Gaza is mentioned 128,000 times.

...While there are no images from Gaza as compelling as those from Yarmouk -- nor is the situation that desperate -- the people here having been living under siege-like conditions for more than six years.

Yes, Turner is trying to compare Gaza with Yarmouk.

You know...the Gaza that we can see in this video from two weeks ago:





Turner isn't interested in the truth, of course - he wants to grab a larger chunk of limited worldwide aid money, money that would otherwise go to people who are really starving, who are really being slaughtered, people who are truly poor.

Besides the obvious lies, Turner says something that reveals a bit more about how anti-Israel NGOs like UNRWA think:

Until the blockade is lifted and access to Gaza's traditional markets -- the West Bank and Israel -- is secured, any sustainable recovery of the local economy remains elusive.

Turner is saying that Gaza cannot be economically viable unless it is allowed access to Israel and the WB markets.

I don't have numbers from Gaza specifically, but in 2005, Israel was by far the PA's biggest market - some 88% of all PA exports went to Israel. It can be safely assumed that the vast majority of Gaza goods were sold to Israel then, and the amount of trade between Gaza and the WB was probably limited.

Israel, of course, decided that buying goods from Hamas -ruled territory is not in its best interests.

But UNRWA seems to be saying that Israel must buy Gazas' strawberries, tomatoes and other produce - goods that Israeli farmers also grow - if Gaza is to become economically viable.

He's not saying Egypt or Jordan or France must buy Gaza goods - but Israel must!

The demands on Israel by NGOs and governments and the media have always been out of whack compared to anywhere else. But this is a new one.