UNRWA writes this week, "The deteriorating law and order situation is severely hindering humanitarian actors from collecting aid at the Kerem Shalom Crossing for distribution within Gaza."
Yet hundreds of truckfuls of supplies are being safely picked up in Kerem Shalom, and distributed seemingly without major incidents.
COGAT reports 67 trucks were collected from Kerem Shalom on July 3, 199 on July 2, 127 on July 1, 51 on June 30.
Apparently, they were all picked up by the private sector. The shortfall in UN aid has been more than made up by commercial ventures where Gazans import the food and other supplies themselves and do all the organization and logistics of distribution, without the help of the UN or other international NGOs.
Capitalism is succeeding where the humanitarian community is failing.
So why do we need UNRWA and the other agencies to build out and maintain their own capacity for the enormous logistics involved in distributing aid to 1.5 million people? Why not just have them coordinate with, and pay, the Gazans who are willing to take the risks of delivering the aid for those who cannot afford to buy it?
Organizations hire contractors all the time. UNRWA even has a manual on policies on hiring contractors, where one of the conditions is that "the need for the required expert knowledge or specialized skills cannot be reasonably met from within the staff resources of the Agency, "
It sure appears that the ability to pick up and deliver aid from Kerem Shalom is a skill that UNRWA employees do not currently have.
Maybe some of the money that now goes towards teaching Gaza kids that their highest calling is to martyr themselves while trying to murder Jews should be directed into paying actual Gazans who are willing to take on the additional risk of aid delivery.
