The Gaza Strip - Facts, Figures and UNDP’s Response to the Ongoing Crisis

With Palestine upgrading its status at the United Nations General Assembly the UNDP is getting ready to upgrade its relation with Gaza Government (or Hamas)

Click here to read UNDP's Programme for Gaza/Hamas.  

UNDP in Gaza giving $$$millions to Hamas to rebuild its infrastructure damaged from "Israeli bombardments"

Click here to download a copy of the project document which UNDP doesn't want anyone to read

This is the UNDP team in Palestine territories:

UNDP/PAPP Management Team

Senior Management
Frode Mauring	Special Representative of the Administrator
Yasmine Sherif	Deputy Special Representative of the Administrator
Khaled Shahwan	Deputy Special Representative (Operations)
Sasha Graumann	Head of Gaza Office
Team Leaders
Abla Amawi	Governance and Social Development
Nasser Faqih	Poverty Reduction
Rima Abu Middain	Natural Capital and Environment
Sufian Mushasha	Strategy, Research and Advisory Unit
Walid Hasna	Chief of Engineering and Infrastructure
Advisors
Amar Bokhari	Programme Management Adviser - Global Fund
Tomislav Condic	Field Security Advisor
Chantal Beaubien	Legal Advisor

The Moral Vertigo of Ban Ki-Moon

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.com (Click here for story)

Whatever the reasoning behind Israel’s decision to swap more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, this deal is no stellar moment for world peace. Quite the opposite. It affirms for the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hamas that there is great gain to hostage-taking. Expect more.

It confirms that for Hamas, the whereabouts of Shalit, held hostage for more than 5 years, were no mystery; yet the erstwhile civilized world during those years chose to lavish funding on the terrorist welfare enclave run by this hostage-taking terrorist gang. And the bulk prisoner release by Israel means that cavalcades of terrorists — responsible for everything from lynching Israelis in Ramallah to wholesale slaughter in bombings of such places as an Israeli nightclub, hotel, pizza parlor, and so on — will be freed; some quite likely with ambitions to kill again.

In Gaza and the West Bank, preparations have been underway to welcome these terrorists as heroes, and celebrate their release. That’s horrifying, but no surprise. These are places where people danced in the streets and gave out candy to celebrate the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. The leaders of both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have done well for themselves over the years by pursuing perpetual conflict and indoctrinating the people living under them in the ways of terror and hatred.

But why does the secretary-general of the United Nations have to hop on this blood-soaked bandwagon? Speaking Monday in Switzerland, where he has been immersed in such matters as “climate change” and Switzerland’s support for the renovation of the UN’s luxurious digs at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Ban Ki-Moon delivered himself of thefollowing statement on the swap of the parade of Palestinian terrorists for the kidnapped Israeli soldier:

The recent announcement, particularly on this exchange of prisoners — that is very welcome. And I sincerely hope that this will give some positive momentum for their relationship for peace and security.

One need not question Ban’s sincerity in this prattle about peace and security. I’m sure he would be delighted if on his watch at the UN, peace were to descend on the Middle East. But he is not a teen-age beauty contestant answering questions here about dreams for mankind. Ban is now well into his fifth year in the top job at the UN, and he was commenting on a cynical deal in which an Iranian-backed Palestinian terrorist group, in a swap for a kidnapped Israeli soldier held hostage since 2006, is now extorting a mass release of terrorists. This is “very welcome”? This will give “positive momentum” to “peace and security”? It won’t even accomplish that for the Palestinians, who, to their own detriment, are led — or, more accurately, misruled — by gangs that thrive on hate and conflict. It won’t buy peace or security for Israel. Nor will it make the world, generally, a safer place. This is a wretched set of de facto rules now being engineered for the 21st century international order. And enthroned at the United Nations, bankrolled to the gills by the U.S., is this bland international bureaucrat, lost in moral limbo, dishing out sentiments that do worse than nothing for peace, security, or even basic decency.

An obvious question follows. When the next terrorist hit on Israel takes place, will Ban’s speech-writers describe him as “disappointed,” or “concerned,” or maybe even “deeply concerned”? Whichever it’s going to be, it is horribly likely he’ll be needing that statement soon. Nor, I’d wager, will he be in the least surprised.

The Economist: Hamas in Gaza - A proper state already

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While Mr Abbas seeks a virtual state at the UN, Hamas controls a real one

UNLIKE Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority—scattered under Israel’s occupation like inkspots on paper—Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, controls its territory, borders, security and trade. Depending less on capricious foreign aid, Gaza also enjoys “exceptionally high” economic growth, according to the latest World Bank report. Reconstruction has finally begun. Growth in the first half of 2011 slumped from 8% to 4% in Mr Abbas’s West Bank, but soared to 28% in Gaza.

Whereas Mr Abbas was willing to negotiate a demilitarised state with Israel, Hamas is bolstering its armed forces. Its Qassam Brigades are said to have packed their arsenals with weapons from Libya’s abandoned arms depots, smuggled in via Egypt.

The Arab awakening has also provided allies to defend against renewed Israeli operations. Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, promises to send military escorts to accompany aid flotillas to Gaza. Egypt has also improved its ties with Hamas.

Sensing the region is swinging its way, Hamas is dismissive of Mr Abbas’s outreach to the West. While the Palestinian president woos the UN, Hamas hobbles it. Hotheads snipe at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides for 1m-plus Gazan refugees, accusing it of turning into a security outfit, and labelling its few foreign personnel as spooks. When UNRWA suspended a union leader for suspected Hamas activity, staff went on strike.

With funds dwindling, UNRWA is struggling to retain its patronage network. It has cut 120,000 Gazans from its ration-books and 3,000 workers from its job programme, and this week announced that more emergency relief was in jeopardy. While the UN pleads with Israel to let concrete into Gaza to rebuild 20,000 buildings battered by Israeli bombardment, Hamas is overseeing a far greater flow of construction materials through the Egyptian tunnels.

NGOs acting as conduits for Western, especially American, funding have faced even greater wrath. When they balked at Hamas demands that they should register with Hamas ministries, submit financial reports and pay a fee (which, under America’s anti-terrorism laws, could be construed as sponsoring terror and cost them their funding), Hamas closed down the largest one, Sharek, on the pretext that its youth groups encouraged premarital sex. Hamas officials also pulled an acclaimed Gazan film about Israel’s 2009 war for portraying a woman walking past the invaders unveiled.

Hamas still needs Western funding too much to gobble up UNRWA entirely. Despite the cuts, UNRWA pours some $300m into Gaza. But Hamas wants the UN to work firmly under its auspices, as it would in a fully-fledged state. To offset the protests, UNRWA survives increasingly by operating on Hamas’s terms. It has suspended the introduction of Holocaust studies in its schools, and has made all its summer camps single-sex.

With such muscle-flexing enhancing Hamas’s state-building efforts on the ground, it is little wonder that the Islamists deride Mr Abbas’s bid for UN recognition of his piecemeal, virtual state. “A symbolic sham,” sneers Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza.

Beware the Brokering of Egypt’s ElBaradei

by Claudia Rosett @ Forbes.com

Now that Hosni Mubarak has resigned as dictator of Egypt, what role in the perilous transition ahead might be played by former United Nations nuclear chief and Nobel laureate, Mohamed ElBaradei?

When protests erupted last month, ElBaradei returned to his native Egypt, and under the caption “opposition leader” has been all over the news, offering himself as a “broker,” a “vessel,” a “bridge,” an “agent of change,” from Mubarak’s rule to “democracy.” On Friday he welcomed Mubarak’s ouster as “the greatest day of my life.”

Yet ElBaradei has linked arms with, among others, Egypt’s Islamist Muslim Brotherhood – the jihad-preaching movement that aspires to an Islamic caliphate, and spawned the terrorists of Hamas and al Qaeda. What kind of brokering and bridge-building might that portend? Look at his record.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Where was ElBaradei’s interest in democracy during the years in which he acquired the multilateral mystique and Nobel prize that made him one of the most famous names in Egypt? As director-general of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, from 1997-2009, ElBaradei’s hallmark was contempt for the world’s democracies, notably the U.S. and Israel; and an affinity for some of the world’s worst tyrannies, notably Iran, Syria and North Korea.

This cannot simply be chalked up to the constraints of serving as a technocrat within the UN, where respect for sovereign states trumps such fine distinctions as despotism versus democracy. ElBaradei has long prided himself on speaking outside the box. As head of the IAEA he used his erstwhile neutral platform in 2009 to try to bully the BBC into airing a fundraiser for Hamas-controlled Gaza. Throughout his 12-year tenure he trespassed on the diplomatic turf of UN member states, publicly urging that despots seeking to fortify themselves with nuclear weapons be treated with deference and dialogue.

When North Korea’s totalitarian regime conducted its first nuclear test, in 2006, ElBaradei did not call for North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Il to step down, complete with his nuclear obsessions, and make way for democracy. He urged appeasement, calling Kim Jong Il’s nuclear detonation “A cry for help.”

In Iran, ElBaradei was one of the UN’s big gifts to the mullahs, running interference for years against referral of Iran’s nuclear program from the IAEA to the UN Security Council. According to former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, ElBaradei “frequently altered the reports of IAEA inspectors,” editing their findings in such a way that he “gave Iran every benefit of the doubt.”

In the fall of 2009, when news emerged that Iran had secretly built a uranium enrichment plant on an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps base near Qom, ElBaradei went to Iran, and on Oct. 4 made a statement there that could hardly have been more deferential toward the UN sanctioned and nonproliferation-treaty-violating Iranian regime. The IAEA inspectors had come, he said, “To assure ourselves that it is a facility built for peaceful purposes.” Ignoring the thrust of three UN Security Council sanctions resolutions aimed at stopping Iran’s drive toward nuclear weapons ElBaradei added, “As I have said many times, and I continue to say today, the Agency has no concrete proof that there is an ongoing weapons program in Iran.” He further assured Iran’s rulers that the IAEA had no interest in Iran’s missile program, which he apparently viewed as in no way “nuclear-related.”

ElBaradei threw in some personal comments, but they had nothing to do with the bloody suppression just four months earlier of the Iranian uprising against a regime far more brutal than the despotism he is now reviling in Egypt. Thanking his Iranian government hosts for their kind welcome, he stressed that this final visit in his official IAEA capacity would be “definitely not my last.” He said that as a private citizen, “I would be very happy to come here as many times as I can.”

Three months after ElBaradei’s Nov., 2009 retirement, the IAEA suddenly became much better at connecting the dots. On February 18, 2010, the new head of the IAEA, Japan’s Yukiya Amano, produced a hard-hitting report, based on information stretching well back into ElBaradei’s tenure, discussing reasons for concern that Iran might be working on “the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

When Israel in 2007 destroyed a clandestine and nearly completed reactor that Syria, with the help of North Korea, had been building for years on the Euphrates River, ElBaradei appeared less upset with the Syrians for building and concealing the illicit reactor than with the Israelis for destroying it. He chided Syria’s tyrannical, terrorist-sponsoring regime for not being more transparent. He publicly accused Israel’s democratic government of breaking international law.

In the case of Saddam Hussein’s mass-murdering totalitarian regime in Iraq, ElBaradei’s current interest in democracy for the Arab world was nowhere on display. He opposed the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam, whose legitimacy he did not question. He reserved for President George W. Bush a brand of insult he never lavished on the worst tyrants of the Middle East.

In 2004, ElBaradei went out of his way to insert the IAEA into the U.S. presidential race between Bush and John Kerry. The week before the vote, The New York Times ran a story, based on half-baked information leaked from the IAEA, alleging that U.S. authorities had failed to secure large quantities of high explosives that had apparently disappeared from an Iraqi weapons facility at Al Qaqaa, near Baghdad. The same day the story broke, ElBaradei rushed to confirm it, sending the leaked document to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan with a letter saying that “because the matter has been given media coverage” ElBaradei wanted the underlying document distributed to the Security Council. It later turned out the Al Qaqaa story had been overblown. But in the runup to the polls, it looked like the IAEA-generated scandal might sway the election. The Washington Post — no fan of Bush — editorialized that ElBaradei had gone out of his way to fuel the story, and “The fact that he was providing easy fodder for Mr. Kerry’s campaign just eight days before the presidential election evidently did not deter this U.N. civil servant.”

The following year, 2005, the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee — also no fan of Bush — awarded ElBaradei and the IAEA the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel citation was necessarily generic praise “for their efforts”; nuclear proliferation was on the move, and there were no stellar deeds to cite.

Having returned to Egypt after his long and richly decorated sojourn at the IAEA, ElBaradei has said he is not seeking the presidency, but if the people insist, he would “not disappoint.” Meanwhile, by his own account “reaching out” to the Muslim Brotherhood, he is there to broker change. He’s got a record as a broker all right, but is this the resume of a man who prizes democracy?

BOLTON: Ban mischief at the U.N..

The Washington Times

By John R. Bolton

Withholding U.S. funds would chasten secretary-general

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is close to making an enormously significant misjudgment about his role and authority. Mr. Ban has repeatedly called for an "international" inquiry into the May 31 clash with Israeli commandos, provoked by supporters of Hamas on a Turkish-flagged ship off the Gaza Strip, resulting in nine killed and dozens wounded. According to the media, he is seriously considering launching such an inquiry by his own personal decision.

For Mr. Ban to act without express U.N. Security Council authorization, however, would far exceed his legitimate authority. It would create a troubling precedent, with implications not just for Israel but for the United States, extending well beyond Israel's blockade of Gaza or the May 31 events. Nonetheless, President Obama has not moved decisively to quash the idea, and his inaction is understood in U.N. circles as implicitly consenting to Mr. Ban's illegitimate initiative.

The U.N. Security Council already has issued a statement by its president, which, although harshly critical of Israel, was significantly watered down from its original draft. The final text said specifically that "the Security Council takes note of the statement of the United Nations Secretary-General on the need to have a full investigation into the matter and it calls for a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards."

In the U.N.'s arcane world, "taking note" of something is simply an acknowledgment it exists. "Taking note" implies neither approval nor disapproval and has all the force of saying "taking note that the sun rose this morning." In short, the Security Council, given the opportunity to authorize Mr. Ban to create an international inquiry, chose not to do so. (Moreover, under the U.N. Charter, the General Assembly lacks authority, whereas here, the Security Council is plainly dealing with a matter involving "international peace and security.")

In fact, U.S. spokesmen said in the immediate aftermath of the Security Council statement that a truly independent, transparent investigation conducted entirely by Israel would be satisfactory. Israel is, in fact, undertaking an investigation with international participants that it asserts will meet this standard.

Additionally, on June 2, the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva entered the fray. By an entirely predictable 32-3 vote, with the United States one of the three dissenters, the HRC created its own "fact-finding mission" to investigate. We can predict with total confidence, based on the Goldstone Inquiry, created by the HRC in January 2009 to investigate Israel's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, what this new inquiry will conclude. Israel, it will say, violated international law in creating the Gaza blockade, was unjustified in intercepting the Gaza flotilla and used disproportionate force in boarding the Turkish vessel.

Why, then, is there still talk of yet another inquiry being established by Ban Ki-moon? Even its ardent Obama-administration supporters know that the HRC, established four years ago to replace its thoroughly discredited predecessor, is itself now discredited and that any HRC report would be widely disregarded in both Israel and the United States. By contrast, an inquiry established by the U.N. secretary-general, whose conclusions almost certainly would be the same as those of the HRC investigation, could well have considerably greater weight and credibility. And if, as many suspect, greater pressure on Israel is what President Obama actually wants, a secretary-general's report would be much more effective.

Israel rejects Mr. Ban's idea, and Mr. Ban himself recognizes it would be futile to proceed if Israel refuses to cooperate, as it undoubtedly will do regarding the HRC inquiry. The real issue, therefore, is the United States' position, and the White House's nonexistent public response to date strongly suggests it would like to see Mr. Ban proceed with his idea. That would enable Mr. Obama to say, disingenuously, that the United States never actually voted to create such an inquiry, all the while letting the U.N. Secretariat know quietly that the White House was perfectly comfortable with it. Unambiguously, Mr. Obama's silence gives consent.

But we also should fully understand the broader implications of a Ban Ki-moon inquiry without express Security Council authorization. This would be a precedent for future power grabs by U.N. leaders, which could well come back to haunt the United States. The U.N. Charter is rhetorically expansive as it is, and when the secretary-general asserts authority beyond the protective reach of Washington's Security Council veto, all manner of mischief is possible.

Before Mr. Ban acts, congressional opponents of yet another inquiry should mobilize. Though they cannot stop Mr. Obama's behind-the-scenes support for this decidedly bad idea, they can respond to it legislatively. These are precisely the circumstances in which a legislative reduction in U.S.-assessed contributions to the U.N. would be warranted. And here, because the abuse of the U.N. Charter is especially flagrant, the amount of the withholding should far exceed our assessed share of the modest cost of the inquiry itself. This is a case where the secretary-general and other U.N. members need to understand that the United States is prepared to take punitive financial action to protect its interests. That way, and that way alone, we might actually get their attention in New York.

John R. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad" (Simon & Schuster, 2007).

Aid to Gaza is inadvertently fuelling the conflict

By Daniel Hannan Politics

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK (CLICK HERE TO GO TO STORY)

Most of us weren’t present during the attack on the flotilla in the Eastern Mediterranean, and we should wait until all the facts are known before rushing to judgment. As often happens in these situations, both sides have hastened to fit events into whatever preconception they already had: either that Israeli commandos were defending themselves against Islamist radicals who had deliberately sought to provoke the use of force, or that there was an act of Israeli state terrorism against unarmed civilians. All we can say for certain at this stage is that something went horribly wrong.

We can, though, add one more observation. The current approach to Gaza — the approach supported by the UN, the EU and, indeed, Israel — is inadvertently fuelling violence. The priority of all the players, including Israel, is to “avert a humanitarian crisis in Gaza” by pouring aid into that unhappy place. In doing so, though, they have helped to create the perfect terrorist habitat.

The thinking is that paramilitarism can be killed with kindness; that the grievances of Gaza can be buried beneath an avalanche of euros. This policy is demonstrably failing. Palestinians are the most heavily subsidised people, in per capita terms, on the planet. Far from de-escalating the conflict, aid on such a scale has driven out enterprise and self-reliance and encouraged cronyism, resentment and rage.

Israel’s intention is clear enough: it wants to “reward” Fatah, by loosening restrictions on the West Bank, while “punishing” Hamas by blockading Gaza. But this policy is having the opposite effect, identifying Fatah in the eyes of many Palestinians with an enemy power. When I raised this issue with Israeli officials earlier this year, they told me that they were mitigating the policy by allowing through humanitarian convoys. This, I replied, was precisely the problem.

What Gaza needs is not aid but trade: the creation of a functioning society based on secure property rights and free commerce. Now plainly this isn’t going to happen immediately. Israelis point, with justice, to the decrease in cross-border terrorist attacks and suicide bombs that followed the sealing of the frontier. Lifting all restrictions tomorrow would lead to an influx of Iranian rocketry.

In the long run, though, Israel must work towards the establishment of a stable state as its neighbour. Palestinians are an enterprising people who, in other Arab countries, generally form the professional and mercantile classes. In Gaza, however, a combination of failed leadership, external blockade and infusions of aid have destroyed civic society. If there were a propertied bourgeoisie in Gaza, its members would be intolerant of freelance rocket-launchers operating from their facilities and attracting reprisals. If there were Gazan businessmen, they would want to remain on good terms with their customers, including their Israeli customers.

Which is why the focus of the international community should be on integrating Palestine into the world economy — a process which must involve a progressive easing of commercial frontier controls (no one is suggesting lifting all security checks in the current climate). It won’t be easy. But it is surely better than carrying on as we are now, with a whirling entropy in Gaza that draws in resources and spews out bombers.