The bitter conflict in Gaza has polarised opinions. Aid agencies are caught in the middle.
Fabrizio Carboni, Regional Director of the Near and Middle East division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC): “People tend to believe we can do things that actually we can’t. I mean we have no army, we have no weapons.”
Some say the ICRC hasn’t done enough to help Israeli hostages.
“If we could release them all we would do it as soon as possible. If we could visit them we would visit them. And at the same time it takes place in an environment which is Gaza,” says Carboni.
Other aid agencies have described their shock at the destruction in Gaza.
James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF said: “The level of bombardments, and the deprivation of food and water and medicines, that’s made that situation as desperate as I’ve ever seen.”
This has fuelled anger on the ground.
“I could objectively see that many attacks were indiscriminate, and safe zones had nothing to do with legal or moral safety. Those things created anger,” continues Elder.
How can aid agencies persuade the warring parties that the only side they take is humanity?
“I care about the families of the people who are taken hostages. I care about the civilians in Israel who regularly have to go in the basement, and I also care about the Palestinians. One does not exclude the other. We're not doing accounting,” concludes Carboni.
Listen to the latest episode of our Inside Geneva podcast and join host Imogen Foulkes to find out more about the situation in Gaza.
Please listen and subscribe to our science podcast -- the Swiss Connection.
Get in touch!
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
The bitter conflict in Gaza has polarised opinions. Aid agencies are caught in the middle.
Fabrizio Carboni, Regional Director of the Near and Middle East division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC): “People tend to believe we can do things that actually we can’t. I mean we have no army, we have no weapons.”
Some say the ICRC hasn’t done enough to help Israeli hostages.
“If we could release them all we would do it as soon as possible. If we could visit them we would visit them. And at the same time it takes place in an environment which is Gaza,” says Carboni.
Other aid agencies have described their shock at the destruction in Gaza.
James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF said: “The level of bombardments, and the deprivation of food and water and medicines, that’s made that situation as desperate as I’ve ever seen.”
This has fuelled anger on the ground.
“I could objectively see that many attacks were indiscriminate, and safe zones had nothing to do with legal or moral safety. Those things created anger,” continues Elder.
How can aid agencies persuade the warring parties that the only side they take is humanity?
“I care about the families of the people who are taken hostages. I care about the civilians in Israel who regularly have to go in the basement, and I also care about the Palestinians. One does not exclude the other. We're not doing accounting,” concludes Carboni.
Listen to the latest episode of our Inside Geneva podcast and join host Imogen Foulkes to find out more about the situation in Gaza.
Please listen and subscribe to our science podcast -- the Swiss Connection.
Get in touch!
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, Imogenfolks, and this is a Swiss info production In today's programme.
Speaker 2:If we could release them all, we would do it as soon as possible. We could visit them. We would visit them and at the same time, it takes place in an environment which is Gaza. Two months ago, a convoy of the Red Cross bearing 13 Israelis and a number of foreigners crossed out of Gaza and into Egypt on the way to Israel. People tend to believe that we can do things, but actually we can't. I mean, we have no army, we have no weapons.
Speaker 3:The International Red Cross has reportedly asked Hamas to allow the organisation to provide critical aid to Israeli hostages. The level of bombardments and the deprivation of food and water and medicines that's made that situation as desperate as I've ever seen. Israel's merciless siege of Gaza is now pushing those inside over the brink. I could objectively see that many attacks were indiscriminate and that the south was going to be battered just like the north, and safe zones had nothing to do with legal, immoral safety.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Imogen Folks. A happy 2024 to all our listeners. I wish I could say it was peaceful, but unfortunately conflict continues in many parts of the world. You'll have guessed from our introduction that today's programme is going to look again at the Middle East and at the increasingly challenging role of the humanitarian agencies. I mentioned last time that we'd be talking to the International Committee of the Red Cross and today we have an extended interview with Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC's director for the Middle East, recorded at the end of last year. Then later we'll hear from James Elder of UNICEF, who talked to me also at year's end, just after he returned from Gaza.
Speaker 1:Now listeners will know that both the Red Cross and the UN have come in for some criticism over this particular conflict. Despite the Red Cross retrieving dozens of hostages once Israel and Hamas had negotiated the complex terms for their release from inside Gaza and returning them home, some in Israel have asked why the ICRC hasn't done more. Meanwhile, un aid agencies like UNICEF have been variously accused of not doing enough, exaggerating the crisis in Gaza or of not paying enough attention to the suffering caused by Hamas's brutal attack on Israel. So here on inside Geneva. I thought I would put some of those points to the aid agencies and give them a chance to explain their work and, as you will hear, explain how complex it can be in a bitter conflict like this one where opinions all around the world are so polarized. We'll start with Fabrizio Carboni and, just as context, the ICRC has worked in Israel and the occupied territories for decades, so it knows the region and this long conflict very well. Fabrizio begins by describing his work immediately after the attacks on October 7th.
Speaker 2:If I look at the first days of this conflict, it was just. I've never experienced this, this intensity, the permanent state of emergency, the chaos. You know, after a couple of hours, we knew what would happen. We knew that there would be a military reaction. We thought about the people who were taken hostages. We knew that, you know, our colleagues in Gaza would be impacted by this conflict and this is probably one of the sad things is that all the things which are happening now, we knew it after a couple of hours, after this awful attack in Israel.
Speaker 1:There's been a lot of focus on the ICRC. Could you explain to people kind of exactly what you do in an operation like this, Because a lot of people have asked me? Nobody is quite clear exactly kind of how it works.
Speaker 2:I think the ICSC does a lot of things situation of conflict and we do the traditional U-Mita and work, you know, providing assistance, medical help, water I mean the classic. And then there is really something very specific to the ICSC, which is our capacity to build a relationship of trust with all parties into a conflict. And this relationship of trust is based on the fact that we don't need to like them, we don't need to agree with them, we just need to agree that we hear only for a U-Mita and objective, and often a very humble U-Mita and objective, and that we will be, in this environment, neutral. We won't comment on the political situation, we won't take side on the reason why people are fighting. Do they have the right or not to use force? We won't go into this.
Speaker 2:And so we built this relationship, this trust, and that's what allows us, when there is a release of hostages, to be on the battlefield, to get out in the middle of the night, go to a secret place, receive hostages and at the same time, make sure that hundreds of kilometers from there the same thing happens, pretty much at the same time, and in this case with Palestinian detainees.
Speaker 2:So I would say, on one hand, it's something which from the outside might look as logistic, but actually to do that with parties who don't trust each other, who actually want to kill each other in a battlefield, in a situation of conflict, and be this third party all party trust, this is extremely difficult. You don't do that overnight. You build this and you build this through your action. It's not enough to speak or to communicate, and I really understand that from the outside it's, on one hand, not enough, but once you know the insight, once you know how difficult it is, you really value this very humble but complex and difficult work, which is the work of a neutral inter-murdery in a situation of extremely polarized conflict.
Speaker 1:There's been some criticism, particularly from Israel, that you didn't or couldn't actually visit these hostages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look when families are telling us this, I really take it. I understand ICSE, red Cross. We have history, we present in many conflicts, we have staff doing unbelievable job all around the world. And in this kind of situation, where it's sometimes desperate, we probably to some extent victim of our image, victim of a sort of success, and people tend to believe that we can do things, but actually we can't. I mean, we have no army, we have no weapons, there is no even a political weight that could force party to do something they don't want to do. The only thing we have it's our capacity to be consistent, to engage with everybody, to talk to them in private, but also publicly.
Speaker 2:And if we go back now to the situation of the hostages, after a couple of hours we were already very clear that it was illegal, that people needed to be released immediately, that we were available to visit people wherever they were and that we demand proof of life. Now the specificity of Gaza it's a battlefield. Normally the work we do visit detainees or collecting proof of life, red Cross messages. In my career I never did this on the battlefield, you know, often detainees or hostages are held in the back, but here it's in the battlefield, it's bombing while it's fighting and most probably the detainees, the hostages, are there. So there is one parties don't want to give us access and do, and two, there is the security risk.
Speaker 1:But I mean just to be clear. You did not know where they were. No we don't, and you didn't get permission to visit them.
Speaker 2:No, okay, yeah, now I mean something which needs to be clear. We cover our work is covered by confidentiality, and this is part of the trust we build with parties Is that whatever we would see in the place of detention, on the condition of detention or the condition in which hostages are held, we would not share it publicly. We would do whatever we can to improve the condition, to make sure that they are well treated. We will demand that the hostages or detainees all around the world are allowed to write messages to their loved ones, but we would not share what we see, because if we do that, we simply don't have access and it's a catch-22.
Speaker 1:When the first group of Israeli hostages were released, you put out a statement on social media. There was a lot of reaction to it. I'm just going to read you a couple of them now, from Israel, saying don't you dare take credit for this. You did nothing, you're just taxi drivers. How does that make you feel?
Speaker 2:Personally it's okay. I mean, I'm fine with this. You know, I didn't join the ICIC to increase the number of followers on social media and we're not a communication organization. At the end of the day, you know, I think, working for the ICIC, you need to accept that not everybody will know your work, not everybody will understand your work, not everybody will appreciate your work.
Speaker 2:I think, in my experience, when people see what we do, not through television, but when they personally benefit from what we do as a detainee, as a hostage, often it changed their perspective. So, coming back to this unpleasant remark, fine, I'm sad for my staff, I'm sad for the colleagues. You know the colleagues who are doing this. They are the colleagues who are in Gaza. You know, three days ago we had again a colleague killed with his family. All of them were displaced. They've lost many of their houses. Many live in substandard shelter. Many are Palestinians. Nevertheless, they go for it Every morning. If they need to do something to work for the release of hostages, for prisoners, for whoever, they'll do it. So personally, I'm okay with these kind of remarks, but deep inside I'm a bit sad for my colleagues who, regardless of the nationality, the religion, the color of the skin would go the extra mile and we'd put their own life at risk. And then I read such a comment is yeah, it's a pity.
Speaker 1:What about this claim? We keep hearing all the time that hospitals are being used for military purposes.
Speaker 2:Look, I think our communication was always very clear. Medical staff and medical infrastructure need to be protected, and when we say in the ICIC, protected means two things Means that it cannot be used as a military base and cannot be targeted, and if it loses its protection because used as a military base, force needs to be used with precaution and with proportionality. Now, when it comes to all the hospitals, I don't have an answer for each and every one of them. What I can guarantee you is that, within confidential dialogue with all parties, we've been clear about what we know and what they should do.
Speaker 1:Can I just ask you what you're hearing about conditions in northern Gaza from your colleagues?
Speaker 2:You know, we've sent in Gaza our best stuff, you know, the most experienced stuff, and they were really affected by what they saw.
Speaker 2:We also send our surgical team, and our surgical team is not in the north, it's still in the south and again, icic surgeon, icic medical staff, I mean they've seen a lot. They really have seen a lot. They've been in Afghanistan, they've been in Sudan, they've been on the front line in Yemen, but there in Gaza it's tough, really tough. The number of wounded is enormous because of the nature of the violence a lot of burns, a lot of kits. I think because of the nature of Gaza, this close place, densely populated, highly urbanized. I mean the nature of the violence, use the nature of the conflict. It has a devastating impact on the civilian population.
Speaker 1:So you're still hoping to facilitate the release of more like the remaining hostages?
Speaker 2:Yes, obviously, yeah, we hope If we could release them all, we would do it as soon as possible. We could visit them. We would visit them. And at the same time, it takes place in an environment which is Gaza, where, honestly, I'm not sure we take the full measure of what's happening there. Really not, and it's this last round of violence, but it's 15, 16 years. Let's have a round of violence. And then there is today and, as you might have, we can't help ourselves to say okay, and then, you know, in a way or another, at one stage violence will stop. Tomorrow, after tomorrow, later, but it will happen.
Speaker 2:But what will be left? And when I say what will be left is physically and emotionally, I mean the trauma most of the people living in Gaza are going through. I don't know how you recover this. You know you can't leave this place. So it means, when they are bombing, when they are fighting, just there, hoping that your neighbor is not a target, hoping that you're not next to a military target, and then you wait. I mean I don't know if you can imagine what it means psychologically.
Speaker 2:It's really tough. And also, in this crisis, it's not about one suffering more than the other, because I found it just despicable, this kind of mindset. So I can say in the same sentence that I care about the families of the people who are taken hostages, I care about the civilians who have been killed, I care about the civilians in Israel who regularly have to go in the basement, and I also care about the Palestinians. One does not exclude the other and we're not comparing, we're not doing accounting, and it's really hard to pass this message. It's really hard for us as ICIC to say you know, it's possible to care about all of them without putting a hierarchy in suffering, and it's a message which is really, really hard.
Speaker 1:Fabrizio Carboni there, the ICRC's director for the Middle East, reminding us that there is no hierarchy of human suffering. A thought that is, I'm sure, hard to hold onto when you have lost a loved one or a home or both, but still a thought we should perhaps keep in mind. Now, while the ICRC was quietly and carefully bringing Israeli hostages out of Gaza, UN aid agencies were trying, as they do in all conflict zones, to alleviate the suffering of civilians, children above all. James Elder of UNICEF travelled to Gaza in December, during that short ceasefire, to assess needs and to try to draw the world's attention to the plight of children. This is what he told me.
Speaker 3:I've never been somewhere where every single person had a story of a loved one being killed, had a story of their daughter now being in hospital, had a story of the family home being destroyed All bad stories, I'm sorry. Immense resilience. People got sick of being called resilient. They just wanted a life. But I've never been to a place where I've seen so many children with the wounds of war, families who are now just sitting under tents having lost a wife, daughters, job, ability to feed your family. And I've never been to a place where the tension levels and the anxiety levels, particularly when the fighting started again, where they just increased every hour, and those levels for its intensity, the unrelenting suffering of everyone that was unique and I think my last word on that is, of course, because I can't remember a war in modern history whereby people can't leave.
Speaker 3:So we can go on and on about safe zones, which is a cynical use of language. Nothing is safe but no one can leave, and I don't know of a conflict zone like that and that, with the level of bombardments and the deprivation of food and water and medicines that's made that situation as desperate as I've ever seen.
Speaker 1:You've been very outspoken. You've said today you are truly furious. But I was wondering. I can't imagine, but I'm hoping you can perhaps tell me a bit about how you feel you go to a place like that and there's a limit, a very limited what you can actually do.
Speaker 3:You know exactly. I think so, even after 20 years of doing this, there's not a degree of ever feigning emotion in a place and I've often wondered why. And that is, I've realized that, as I heard decades ago to win the lottery at birth. So for me, I grew up middle class in a country town in Australia and as my life has panned out, even from my backpacking days, I've realized that is a very fortunate thing to do. It's not exceptional, but it's very, very comfortable and it was safe, but it's not exceptional. There is nothing about that.
Speaker 3:So when I am in a refugee camp or in a complex zone or anywhere, I don't feel anything separates me. I think it literally just the lottery at birth. There is no other reason. And of course, as you know, once you start talking to people, their heroic actions to get their families out of situations are invariably for me far more stoic and brave and intrepid than I would have ever imagined being able to do anyway.
Speaker 3:So I've never felt any reason that I couldn't just be in those places. So that is why I sense that emotion when I see just senseless suffering on people despite their best efforts, and they just can't get out of it. And then a place like Gaza, I think because of the sheer relentlessness of the attacks and the false sincerity all the time, the press conferences and the discussions and the promises made, and when I could see on the ground not subjectively I could objectively see and learn that many attacks were indiscriminate and that the South was going to be battered just like the North and safe zones had nothing to do with legal or moral safety, then those things, I think on the ground particularly created an anger.
Speaker 1:Aid agencies, though, have come in for quite a lot of criticism for being so outspoken. I mean, you hear certainly from some sections in Israel that their suffering is being neglected and all the focus is on Gaza.
Speaker 3:Yes, I mean, it's the what to say are you going to? All you can do is to look back at the records and to look back I would only speak to my own organisation to look to what we said on the 7th of October. Look to. I would argue that if I've done 100 interviews in the last three weeks, certainly I know that at least half, probably more, of my interviews I will always still speak to those hostages, getting those children home, and that's not to do that to placate any audience that again speaks to a ceasefire. That is the right thing to do.
Speaker 3:I know it can sound soppy or cliched. I mean it wholeheartedly. For me, a child is a child wherever they are. To think of a child somewhere in a tunnel, presumably with an armed man there, I mean it gives me a chill. I sometimes think that we've been a little bit more emotive about that versus those who have power in this, in this conflict. So, look, I can understand when there's been tempered criticism. Some of the hate mail I get simply speaks to the polarization and the anger and the frustration which is happening probably on both sides the longer this thing goes on. But objectively, I would happily have that conversation with anyone that thinks that UNICEF and other agencies haven't been very outspoken about the atrocities that happened on the 7th, but then continuing into what is happening to children in Gaza and in the West Bank right now.
Speaker 1:Do you ever have a concern because I have heard this from other humanitarian agencies of this polarization that you mentioned is damaging the space, shrinking the space that humanitarians can work in?
Speaker 3:Without a doubt. I mean, it's very different environment now. Being a humanitarian, I think even if I had to talk about 20 years, I would have thought that wearing a UNICEF t-shirt in the field was all the security you needed. Now, unfortunately, anyone who goes around the world sees the level of security required from a Somalia to I don't know even a Ukraine, and that saddens me enormously, both because these are humanitarians but because money in security could be money in nutritional, therapeutic food. I don't think there's a new magic pot of funding just for security.
Speaker 3:So I think there's no doubt that the angrier people get and the more you listen to UN staff and they're constantly having to remind audiences of their impartiality, that, for me, was a given.
Speaker 3:I don't ever remember being asked that previously, but now we have to, and I understand that, as you say, because we have been outspoken and whether it's because I've seen past crises or whether because I was in Gaza and it became so, so clear to me just how many breaches there were of decency and rights and therefore we needed to be as candid as that.
Speaker 3:But that should never, that kind of candor that we can back up with evidence, I don't think should ever then sort of bring into disrepute the actual impartiality that ages you have. But yes, it's becoming much more difficult. I'd add to that One thing I find very difficult is that there are certain broadcasters where you will speak to them and the aim for me is to share the situation, as horrendous as it is and with ideas, what UNICEF wants to happen. But some broadcasters are already very, very explicit in showing the horrors in Gaza and then sometimes I feel all I'm doing is feeding in to that kind of polarization and hatred, and I'm not there to defend any country, I'm not there to try and protect one reputation over another. But the last thing you want to be when you're explaining the horrors that are either being committed or ignored, is to become part of increased polarization among audiences.
Speaker 1:Okay, so one last question for you, which is quite a personal one, but it's also one that me and some of my colleagues in Geneva have also been struggling with a bit. Most of the journalists and most of the aid workers in Geneva have actually been in conflict zones. With this particular conflict, some of us are thinking I don't know if I can do this anymore, Witnessing reporting on such violence constantly, whether it's Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, now Gaza. Do you ever think that I just can't do this anymore?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes and no, mostly no, honestly, and there's something. I don't know what it is, because I've got three kids, but two of them are early 20s and 116. And the early 20s sometimes their friends will say to me like that how do you keep doing this and the stories you must hear? You should go back and see a council and so on, and I think is there something wrong with you. I can still function after these things. They can break me on the spot. I can walk out of a hospital and go back to a UN base and have 15 minutes by myself and be very fragile, but then I can function again and I wondered okay, what is this? Something I'm missing?
Speaker 3:And I remember speaking to someone who explained that there is a whole bracket of work for people who've experienced those kind of things that you spoke of, but based on their earliest years 0 to 10, they've had a safe existence, so they have an ability to see and endure those things and then to still function.
Speaker 3:I'm only doing this work now because I still truly believe and, as I say, mostly the work we do around grey violations falls on deaf ears, but that is something I still find very, very important to try and reinforce the rights-based approach to these things. It seems to drop off the radar, but then I also know that a large part of the work is to speak about what UNICEF does and how well they do it and why they need money. As journalists will tell you, the most engaging part of being on the ground is actually getting to understand a place, and I've always found that in a single country this job is different. It's global, but in a single country, quite a privilege to try and get under the carpet of a place and just meet, you know everyday people and try to really understand their country. I always felt very grateful to have that opportunity.
Speaker 1:And that brings us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. My thanks to Fabrizio Carboni of the ICRC and James Elder of UNICEF for their time and their thoughts. I hope what they had to say brings some clarity and some humanity to what is often a bitter, sometimes misinformed, discussion. As Fabrizio says, there is no hierarchy to suffering. It is possible to care about all those affected by this conflict without taking sides and, as James Elder says, a child is a child wherever they come from, and children have a right to protection.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed this edition of the podcast, check out some of our previous episodes, including a series of in-depth interviews with the men and women doing what's called the UN's toughest job UN Human Rights Chief. You can find us and subscribe to us and even review us wherever you get your podcasts. A reminder you've been listening to Inside Geneva from SwissInfo, the international public media company of Switzerland, available in many languages as well as English. Check out our other content at wwwswissinfoch. I'm Imogen Folks. Thanks again for listening and do join us next time on Inside Geneva.