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Con: Given America’s endless flow of military aid to Israel, rebuilding Gaza is least we can do

COLUMBUS, Ohio — EDITOR’S NOTE: The writer is addressing the question, Was the U.S. pledge to rebuild Gaza a naive gesture?

Providing $900 million in aid to rebuild Gaza is the least the United States can do. We sat and applauded while Israel bombed Gaza with impunity for 22 days last December and January.

We are a major cause of the disaster that has befallen Gaza. U.S. taxpayers supplied Israel, free of charge, with the jet fighters, the Apache helicopters, and the other sophisticated weaponry it used in Gaza.

Gazans know this, as does the entire Arab world. Israel’s assault on Gaza provided one more reason to hate America.

George W. Bush held the White House during the assault, but both he and the incoming administration greeted Israel’s assault with no hint of criticism. The massive destruction that Israel inflicted took the already low level of existence of Gaza’s population to new depths.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon visited Gaza after the assault and pronounced the situation “intolerable.” One of the few Americans to visit described the scene in Gaza City as “decimation, one building after another collapsed into rubble.” Gazan civilians figured prominently among the casualties, as Israel targeted residential buildings. As Israeli forces commandeered Gaza houses, they blew up nearby houses, to ensure against attack.

The Israeli government is investigating reports that its forces killed Palestinian civilians who posed no threat. According to a human rights agency, they also kept ambulances from getting to the injured in buildings that had been bombed.

During the assault, Israel shelled a U.N. compound, destroying much-needed supplies. Gaza has been an economic basket case for over half a century, and we share a good deal of the blame.

In 1967, the Lyndon Johnson administration covered for Israel when it invaded and seized Gaza. In 1948, the Harry Truman administration covered for Israel when it drove Palestinians from the central coastal area of Palestine into Gaza, turning it into one of the most densely populated areas of the planet.

In 1950, the situation was already so dire that the United Nations set up the Relief and Works Agency to provide staple foods to Gaza, and to house and educate Gazans. That agency will distribute much of the projected U.S. aid. It is responsible for those Gazans who are refugees from the 1948 displacement.

Israel has been none too cooperative in letting aid trucks through the border crossings, which it controls. UNRWA Director Karen Abu Zayd has come down hard on Israel for blocking aid in the past.

Even before its recent assault on Gaza, Israel blocked shipments of food and other vital supplies into Gaza. It controls most access points to Gaza.

Abu Zayd said that every Gazan now lives with the trauma engendered by the conflict. “Aid dependency in Gaza,” she says, is “at an alarmingly high level.”

UNRWA is now feeding 1 million refugees in Gaza. The World Food Programme provides aid to nonrefugee Gazans.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that $300 million is humanitarian aid for Gaza, presumably to be handled by UNRWA. The other $600 million is for the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank but not Gaza, to cover budget shortfalls, institutional reforms and economic development.

The Obama administration is adamant that the aid not be seen as aiding Hamas. Supplying aid while boycotting the government in charge is tricky business. State Department spokesman Robert A. Wood said details of the aid, “including the manner of distributing the money, are yet to be settled.”

Aid is critical to prevent further humanitarian disaster in Gaza. For all the contradictions of the U.S. involvement in the Gaza situation, the aid is badly needed and should be dispatched as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Regardless of what one thinks about the rights and wrongs, the civilians of Gaza have paid a terrible price.

John B. Quigley is a professor of law at Ohio State University. Readers may write to him at The Michael E. Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University, 55 W. 12th Ave., Columbus, Ohio 43210, or via e-mail Quigley.2@osu.edu.