The Governance of Aid to Palestine After the War on Gaza
The ongoing devastation in the Gaza Strip since October 7 has led to a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented scale. The humanitarian needs, already dire, will be beyond comprehension the day the war ends. Food aid will be essential for the entire population, especially to address child malnutrition and immediate access to clean water and sanitation. Immediately, the displaced population of up to 1.7 million will need decent transitional shelter, and the wounded will require makeshift medical facilities and specialized care, with lifelong support for those left disabled. Mass trauma will necessitate long-term specialist programs. In the near term, innovative solutions must be devised for Gaza’s 625,000 school-aged children and over 90,000 university students. Financial support, including cash-for-work programs and universal basic income, will be crucial to protect against abject poverty and prepare for recovery. These urgent relief measures must be addressed before recovery or reconstruction can begin in earnest.
Delivering aid to Palestine, specifically to Gaza, in this prolonged crisis, has revealed a quagmire of ethical, bureaucratic, and operational failures. The international humanitarian system largely circumvents Palestinian leadership due to political fragmentation, yet it remains willing to submit to Israel’s never-ending and often arbitrary conditions for delivering aid. This was most evident in the access granted to small, unknown organizations like the World Central Kitchen, which partnered with Israeli entities, while other established local aid providers, such as UNRWA, were barred. The ethical failure was also evident when donor countries provided exponentially more expensive, less effective, and at times, deadly, airdrops rather than challenge Israel's closure of land borders on humanitarian grounds. Finally, the US government's ill-fated $230 million Gaza pier and maritime corridor, ostensibly for the delivery of humanitarian aid, served as a distraction from USA partisanship towards Israel, based on a failed concept of intervention by military contractors, non-humanitarian personnel, and new aid actors.
The time has come for a shift in the governance of aid to Palestine, allowing Palestinians to be the architects of their own recovery and development. This is not merely a demand for inclusion; it is a call for justice and an insistence on adherence to internationally recognized principles of effective and responsible aid delivery. It is about recognizing that those who endure hardships are best positioned to understand and address them. It is about ensuring that aid is not a means of imposing external priorities but a mechanism that genuinely empowers Palestinians to pursue their own aspirations for peace, stability, and prosperity.
Palestinian ownership of aid governance implies Palestinian stewardship of the design and implementation of aid initiatives. It means taking the lead from those who understand the local landscape; who can see beyond immediate relief to long-term resilience; and committed to empowering their communities. It means that the design and coordination of aid do not happen in distant offices and boardrooms, but are lived and led by those on the ground.
These principles are not idealized notions; rather, they are the fundamental principles of effective aid delivery articulated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) framework, which emphasizes the importance of local ownership by the beneficiary country, alignment with its national priorities, and true partnership between the beneficiary and donor country. These principles advocate for developing countries to establish their own development strategies, and for donors to support and align with those strategies. Other approaches and principles, such as the Triple Nexus Approach, similarly recognize the importance of this integration as well as the interconnectedness of humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding efforts.
