Mr. John Whyte:

I thank Senator Higgins. These are all very good questions. As Senator Stephenson mentioned, MSF has reported extensively on the GHF sites and the controversy associated with them. I do not think I need to elaborate more. Senator Higgins has correctly mentioned the deaths that have taken place at these sites. Of course these are being denied or minimised but it is pretty incontrovertible from our point of view. People are going there to try to get aid in desperation. You would have to be very desperate to put your life at risk to try to get a box of food parcels because these are killing zones. There is no way to say it otherwise. They are staffed by mercenaries and if there are desperate people and guys who are heavily armed with license to shoot, then, of course, it is a recipe for disaster. UNRWA has distributed food for 75 years without fatalities. It is not a condition of getting food that you risk being shot.

UNRWA wants the humanitarian system to be allowed to implement aid assistance because we can do it. We are trained to do it. We know how to do it safely, correctly and appropriately. We do not have public order issues at our sites when we have ample supplies and the ability to distribute at scale because the people trust they will be fed. They are not desperate when there is enough food. We did not have mass looting in January and early February during the ceasefire. It is only when the ceasefire broke down and the blockade started the people became desperate and started overrunning everywhere to try to get food in understandable desperation.

Yes, UNRWA buildings have been targeted and our infrastructure has been targeted but so has everything in Gaza. We have protocols for raising our complaints, through the machinery of international humanitarian law, to the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs and everything is documented. We do not usually get the opportunity to investigate internally because we cannot have access to these sites when they are blown apart. They are usually in a militarised zone. We cannot check to see what happened and do a forensic examination of the site. Also, it is more the mandate of other agencies to do this but they have also been precluded from being in Gaza.

In terms of the blocking of UNRWA aid, as I mentioned, in some ways it does not match the letter of the Knesset legislation; it is just a discretionary decision by the Israelis because they control access into Gaza. How the Knesset legislation impacts on UNRWA is that there is no contact on Gaza. We cannot get out without contact and we cannot get in without contact. This is why international staff are stuck outside now.

There is a whole bureaucracy around the administration of aid. This can be slowed down or speeded up at will if people want to frustrate or facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance. What we see on a daily basis is the frustration, impediment and denial of the entry of aid into Gaza. It happens in so many ways.