TheAltWorld Supporting Israel’s security narrative puts aid workers at risk
Doctors Without Borders has decided it will not share details of its staff with the Israeli authorities. In a statement published last Friday, the humanitarian organisation announced that Israel gave no assurances of security. As the statement partly reads, “it became evident in recent days that we were unable to build engagement with the Israeli authorities on the concrete assurances required.” The realisation comes as no surprise. It is impossible to expect assurances from a colonial enterprise that has just navigated a genocide with full approval from the international community.
What is of particular note, however, is MSF’s concluding statement. “MSF remains open to ongoing dialogue with the Israeli authorities to maintain our critical operations in Gaza and the West Bank.” How can a humanitarian organisation dialogue with a military power that committed genocide and is now refining it through diplomatic measures? This imposition – an unrealistic one – is a result of world leaders politicising humanitarian aid to preserve the continuation of colonial violence.
World leaders have called upon Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, but the statements are more in line with the humanitarian pauses than actual humanitarian decency. Rhetorically, diplomats have emphasised the importance of humanitarian aid, but the repeated statements are far removed from the reality of operating within the context of Israeli colonial violence and genocide. Diplomats speak from their varnished stands, while humanitarian workers have to navigate the repercussions of world leaders’ political stances and complicity with Israel, without being allowed to speak up politically, lest the humanitarian paradigm be exposed for what it is – a sham that supports ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Several aid organisations have refused to comply with Israel’s orders to avoid compromising the security of their staff. The decision will affect the delivery of humanitarian aid, but placing the burden on aid organisations only adds impunity for Israel and the complicit international community.
When the international community supports Israel’s security narrative, it is also supporting violence against the paradigm it created and humanitarian aid, as well as workers, become collateral damage. The entire world knows Israel killed aid workers throughout the genocide, although international ire was only slightly visible when non-Palestinians were killed. However, more needs to be said about the international community’s role in placing aid workers in peril, because while Israel drops the bombs, world leaders exploit a weak humanitarian paradigm that can offer no support for aid workers.
As world leaders debated on how to allow genocide to continue in Gaza, they called for humanitarian assistance. What is left out of the equation is that humanitarian aid cannot perpetually serve in a colonial context. Aid workers have been murdered, and the organisations’ decisions not to comply with Israel’s rules illustrates a realisation: humanitarian aid workers are expected to step in as a veneer for politics and genocide. The question is – as humanitarian aid organisations refuse to give in to Israel’s demands, which world leader will step in for these organisations? A rhetorical question, of course, but one that points fingers where the blame should lie – with all that project colonialism and humanitarian aid as inextricably interlinked and necessarily so.
While aid workers save lives, world leaders promote the above equation of political violence as a solution. No wonder diplomacy insists that humanitarian aid should not be politicised.
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