Stop the civilian carnage now, aid worker Jan Egeland begs Israel and Hamas
‘We need to resume some sanity here,’ says secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council
A high-profile aid worker is calling on Hamas to release its hostages immediately, and begging Israel not to take vengeance on innocent Palestinians and their children.
Jan Egeland is the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a non-profit that helps people around the world who are forced to flee their homes. Before that, he was the United Nations emergency relief co-ordinator.
But in all his decades of work, he says there's nothing more divisive than the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.
Just six days into this latest war, at least 2,800 people have been killed on both sides, according to officials on both sides. That number is expected to climb as Israel continues its siege and bombardment of Gaza, a small enclave home to 2.3 million people, many of them children. The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency says about 340,000 Palestinians have been displaced inside Gaza.
The airstrikes on Gaza — and a looming potential ground invasion — are in retaliation for a co-ordinated and deadly surprise attack on Saturday, in which Hamas militants snatched more than 100 hostages from several locations around Israel.
Egeland has written an open letter, addressed to foreign ministers around the world, asking them to push both sides to take action to protect civilians. It calls on Hamas to release its hostages immediately and for Israel to lift its siege. It also calls on both sides to create and respect a humanitarian corridor to get aid to Gazans, and a "safe, demilitarized zone" within Gaza.
Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
Have you received any response yet to those letters you sent to foreign ministers?
We have initial responses that they are studying them, that they agree with the content. And they are looking at what can be done in terms of getting humanitarian corridors, and getting safe spaces for civilians in Gaza, and also a resumption of aid there.
So we're hopeful.
Is that good enough, though?… Is there time for them to study this?
There is not much time at all. It's impossible to describe the carnage in and on the civilians of Gaza. There are now hundreds of thousands in this tiny enclave that have been displaced. I heard that 22 of my 52 colleagues have had to flee from their homes. We have aid workers on the ground. The aid workers are also having to flee with the civilian population.
But I'm hopeful. We need to resume some sanity here. I just had the opportunity to speak now live at Al Jazeera Arabic. It was just after the al-Qassam Brigades, which is the Hamas military branch, came with a declaration. I know they are watching.
My appeal to them was: Release the hostages now. They call them prisoners of war. They're not prisoners of war. They are women, children, elderly, disabled people. They have to be released.
Of course, we're also calling for these corridors to safe zones and an end to the bombardment, which is now making it impossible for us even to get relief to the children of Gaza.
What should [Israel] be doing, if they're saying, you know, as they've always said, that Hamas is in every part of Gaza [and] we have to root them out?
I think they should fight terror and terrorists, and not retaliate against the children of Gaza. I mean, where did revenge come in as a rational tool to fight terror? There [are] a million children in Gaza.
To have the siege on Gaza so that not even relief for children can get in, to cut off all electricity so that wounded children cannot be operated upon — when did that become a rational response? And how [will] that make people less bitter and less filled with hatred?
Israel's energy minister, as you may have seen, wrote online on social media this morning: "Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals." You said you had hope, but does that discourage you to hear that?
Yes, it does. But then, you know, after the terror that they lived through, how can I tell them to be rational in a way? But of course, if they want to lose the moral high ground, if they want to make this some kind of a mud-wrestling match with the al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, I think they're doing a major mistake. And I think they will lose … the moral high ground and the sympathy.
The war on terror ended up with black sites [secret prisons] and torture after the United States was hit after 9/11. I really hope that this will be a fight against terror and not some kind of revenge operation.
You have connections to Israel and now you've been travelling there for a long time. Your brother lived on a kibbutz. You told some of our CBC News colleagues you also went to school there, to Hebrew University. So you understand this conflict and this ongoing cycle.
I was reading some of the responses to the bullet points you put on social media of what you wrote in your letters to these foreign ministers. And one of the responses, you know, said, "Why don't you care about Israeli lives?" And what does it tell you about where we're still at in this conflict when that's the kind of response you get?
You're really at a very crucial point here. I have been in many peace mediation efforts. I have been dealing with many, many conflicts. There is no place where it's so polarized as this.
When people are cheering terror against Israelis, and when now people are saying, "We don't care about Palestinian children," then it shows me that we're very far away from any common ground of any peaceful coexistence, which means that both sides are undermining their own security longer term.
There has to be a minimum of empathy for the civilian population on both sides. If not, they will be condemned to eternal cycles of violence.
Israel has a right of living in peace and security. So do the Palestinians.
How much time, do you think, without aid getting in, people in Gaza have?
Those who are now under the rubble, the children who are now under the rubble without being rescued, they are dying as we speak. So they have no time.
For each hour that goes, more people will be affected. More people will be dying.
We should have an end to this cycle of violence now.
With files from Reuters. Interview produced by Katie Geleff. Q&A edited for length and clarity
