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Australian aid projects in Gaza under threat Date October 20, 2012 - 12:45AM Ruth Pollard, Gaza a.. Farming in Gaza Ruth Pollard visits some of the projects in Gaza which World Vision is under pressure to stop supporting. a.. Autoplay OnOff b.. Video feedback c.. Video settings Four sheep, eight goats and 20 chickens. Along with her small vegetable garden, this modest menagerie helps keep Najah Ghanim's family of nine from going hungry when times get tough. Her well-tended backyard garden in Gaza's northern suburbs is one of the many aid projects supported by World Vision Australia via AusAID funding and delivered by the Palestinian not-for-profit organisation, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. But if the Israel Law Centre has its way, this project and dozens more like it would close, as it pursues a campaign against World Vision Australia for working with the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which it alleges has links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. With the program ... Gazan farmer Ismail Marouf grows tomatoes in a greenhouse in the Gaza Strip under the AusAID scheme. Photo: Ruth Pollard The United Nations, Australia and many other countries list the PFLP as a proscribed terrorist organisation. Advertisement UAWC denies it has links with the PFLP and an AusAID investigation into the allegations found them to be baseless. Undeterred, the Israel Law Centre, also known as Shurat HaDin, continues to threaten legal action against World Vision Australia. The World Vision-funded projects in Gaza involve more than 8000 vulnerable people in the north and south of the 42-kilometre long strip, many struggling after their farming land, greenhouses and irrigation systems were destroyed in Israeli air strikes. In a scathing letter to Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the director of Shurat HaDin, the chief executive officer of World Vision Australia, the Reverend Tim Costello, described the centre's allegations as unsubstantiated and in some cases defamatory. "We are staggered by your claim that a 'tremendous fraud was being perpetrated by World Vision Australia and AusAID against the Australian public'," Mr Costello wrote on September 27. "We assume that if the Israeli Ministry of Justice had any cause to accept your allegations that the 'PFLP is the controlling hand of UAWC' ... the ministry would refuse to renew UAWC's ... status." Instead, UAWC retained its long-term, non-government organisation status with Israel, the AusAID investigation found. The UAWC's "protestation of the loss of Palestinian farming land" was "not tantamount to terrorism," Mr Costello wrote. "We can find no evidence of any UAWC espousal of violence against Israel or complicity in it." In May, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, backed the AusAID investigation, saying UAWC was "not banned by Israel or declared a terrorist organisation by the Israelis". "Taking into account the thorough nature of AusAID's examination and advice from [the Australian Government Solicitor] that no offence has been identified, the [Australian Federal Police] has advised it would not accept this matter for further investigation," Senator Carr said. Despite the findings, Shurat HaDin had given World Vision Australia a deadline of this week to stop funding the Gaza-based organisation or face proceedings in the Federal Court for alleged breaches of the Charter of the United Nations Act 1945, and claims of misleading and deceptive conduct. It has agreed to "postpone the commencement of any litigation" after a meeting with World Vision last weekend convened by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Shurat HaDin said it was not commenting at this time. This week, Fairfax Media visited many of the Gaza projects run by UAWC and World Vision Australia. Along with Najah Ghanim's farm garden, the projects included two greenhouses where tomatoes were grown, a centre for raising seeds and seedlings to give to families and for public planting in Gaza and a gender training course to increase the participation of women in farming. With the UN estimating that 44 per cent of Gazan households are "food insecure", these projects provided vital help to struggling families, said the general manager of the UAWC, Mohammed al-Bakri. "I do not send rockets to Israel, I do not fire a gun. I am talking about human rights for Palestinians. I help to distribute engines to fishermen who have had their boats confiscated by the Israelis, and food for farm animals ... we run mass vaccination programs and collect agricultural statistics," he said. "We are not affiliated to any political party or movement, we renounce all types of violence and we work to make farmers aware of their basic human rights." Joel Thorpe, the head of co-operation at AusAID Ramallah, said: "The organisation is delivering much-needed assistance in a very difficult operating environment." The extent of the destruction from Israel's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip from December 2008 to January 2009 was laid bare in a UN report released in August. It found that along with the 6268 homes destroyed or severely damaged, 186 greenhouses were destroyed and there were 931 "impact craters" in roads and fields. Added to that, 35,750 cattle, sheep and goats and more than 1 million chickens and other birds were killed and 17 per cent of the cultivated area destroyed, causing $US181 million in direct and $US88 million in longer-term costs for Gaza's agriculture, the report found. The Palestinian Non-Government Organisations Network described the actions of Shurat HaDin as "an ongoing smear campaign targeting Palestinian civil society organisations seeking the implementation of international law and respect for human rights. "All organisations which have attempted to denounce Israel's human rights violations have been targeted," the network noted. Despite the sustained negative campaign by Shurat HaDin, the UAWC's international funding partners, including Oxfam Britain, Belgium and Italy, the Dutch government, the aid arms of the Spanish and Italian governments and several UN bodies were standing behind UAWC, Mr al-Bakri said. For World Vision Australia, its support is unwavering. "We believe that UAWC is a bona fide Palestinian agricultural development entity and, despite the allegations you have made, that it operates independently of the PFLP and any other proscribed organisation in Gaza," Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/australian-aid-projects-in-gaza-under-threat-20121019-27vo1.html#ixzz29mRJ8nOd [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
