HUMANIFESTO – EDITION 9

Cairo, Egypt – 10 February 2025

Finishing a week in Occupied Palestinian Territory, including to West Bank and Gaza (the first ERC visit for over fifteen years), Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. 

In Nir Oz - a kibbutz that had a quarter of its community killed or kidnapped on 7th October 2023 – I heard of that day of terror and how survivors wait daily for the return of their friends and family, still believing in peace. A grandmother there shared a necklace as a gift for a grandmother in Gaza. The Israeli people are deeply wounded by over 1200 deaths.

I had prepared myself for the worst. But nothing prepares you for crossing into North Gaza, and the miles of rubble, death, despair. Bloated dogs picking out corpses. People unable to locate their ruined homes, as there are no landmarks by which to navigate. I visited Al Awda, the only hospital in North Gaza that functioned – just – throughout the last 18 months. The surviving doctors operated even as their colleagues were killed by snipers and drones. I donated blood in the ruins of Al Shifa Hospital, where mothers gave birth under the bombs, without medical help. I met many members of a chilling new humanitarian classification: WCNSF (wounded child, no surviving family). I visited a vital UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] water well, shelters and schools in Gaza, and areas of violent displacement across the West Bank. 

You can see and hear more in interviews with CNN, BBC, France 24, AP, Washington Post, PBS and local media.

I will update the Security Council. The humanitarian needs are monumental. The entire population in Gaza is deeply traumatized by months of bombardment, grief and nearly 48,000 killed. We will all feel the repercussions for decades.

Our humanitarian effort since the ceasefire has been huge. We have delivered more trucks of aid than any – including us – expected, in tough conditions, including continued looting and under fire yesterday from Israeli forces. Famine has been largely averted, and there is no credible humanitarian alibi for those who want to end the ceasefire. It is wonderful to see survivors – Israeli and Palestinian – reunited with their families. Our humanitarians in Gaza, many of whom have lost their lives, homes, and families, are the pride of the humanitarian movement. I hope this will set the bar for what we can deliver when allowed to try. But we need to see more aid in and hostages out, serious funding, and the ceasefire to hold.

Meanwhile, as I saw on my extensive tour, civilian displacement in the West Bank can no longer be described as ‘creeping’. The violence, most recently in Jenin and Tulkarm, must stop. 

While I was in the region, those I met were responding with mixed reactions to President Trump’s surprise statement on the future of Gaza: putting the real estate into statecraft. While we await the finer details, I’ve suggested in the media that Palestinians should be asked what they think. 

In the region as everywhere, discussions are also dominated by the US aid freeze and the bleak funding picture more widely. Former USAID colleagues I met were heading home. Partner NGOs were anxiously working out how to continue. As I said in my last Humanifesto, for decades the US has been the humanitarian superpower, saving hundreds of millions of lives. Humanitarian organizations are working hard to build trust, efficiency and competence. There is a strong connection between leadership on global challenges and the issues that matter to voters. Humanitarianism is rooted in our deepest human DNA: our desire to feed those who are starving, give the opportunity of education to children, and to protect people just like us from violence and terror. 

Meanwhile, like many across the community, we have taken immediate measures to reduce costs, including by freezing all but essential recruitment, travel and procurement. This is not about institutions, it is about saving lives. 

I head next to London, to mark 20 years since Mandela’s extraordinary appeal in Trafalgar Square for humanitarian solidarity. Then to Geneva, to bring together the humanitarian community in response to the challenges of renewing that hope in the face of new challenges. We must not be overwhelmed.

What has happened in Gaza will not stay in Gaza. We must save as many survivors as we can, while we can; and stand firm on positions of principle and international humanitarian law. On a whiteboard in Al Awda Hospital, a Palestinian doctor (later killed by an airstrike) wrote ‘whoever stays until the end, will tell the story, we did what we could’.

We must do what we can. 

No book recommendation this week, but I wish I could share the mesmerizing aroma and vivid colours of the Old City of Jerusalem. No music this week, but a grandmother in Gaza asked me to play her some birdsong on my phone. So here is what we listened to together, on the ruins of her home.

Yours,
Tom