No major food groups: aid chaos in Gaza

0:02The Economist

0:10Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

0:24As we now all intimately know, international cooperation during a pandemic is crucial to ending it. We examine a new UN pandemic treaty, the most notable absence among its signatories, and reasons to be grateful for a modest diplomatic win. And in the world's biggest museums, you know you're only seeing a fraction of the collection. There's always more in a basement or a warehouse. We report on a novel exhibition in London that should be replicated. Let the public into the warehouse too.

1:02But first...

1:14There have long been questions about the distribution of aid in Gaza, but this week they have piled up. What amounted to a total Israeli blockade began in early March. Last Monday, it was lifted and aid was supposed to flood in. Question, why on that first day did only five lorries make it through? On Tuesday, 93 more crossed the border. Yet the UN said the Israeli army did not give them permission to collect the food and medicine. Question, why? What's not in question is this. Gazans are going hungry. This week, a new private firm was supposed to address that. the innocuously named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started its work on Monday.

2:02What followed was, in a word, chaos.

2:10If you look at the foundation's game plan, more questions. Did anyone think this would help the people of Gaza? And if not, what's the actual goal? It did not take long for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to lose control of its distribution centers. Greg Karlstrom is our Middle East correspondent. There were chaotic scenes on Tuesday when thousands of Palestinians rushed one of the centers in southern Gaza. At least three of them were killed by gunfire from the Israeli army. Some of the centers were closed for at least part of the day Wednesday again because of the large crowds. And it was a rocky start for the foundation that I think demonstrates just how difficult it's going to be to set up any kind of alternative aid distribution mechanism in Gaza.

3:00Well, let's talk about the mechanism first. How does it work? Let's draw a contrast with how the UN has distributed aid in Gaza up until now. It has relied on the principle that you try to bring aid as close to people as you can. So the UN had hundreds of locations across Gaza where people could come and collect food and collect other supplies. This new mechanism is almost the opposite of that. It envisions four distribution centers. All of them are in either the south or the central part of Gaza. None of them are in the north. They are being set up by this foundation in conjunction with U.S. private security firms, mercenary firms, called Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions.

3:45These centers are each meant to serve about 300 ,000 people. So the four of them should be able to serve 1.2 million people. And the idea is every few days you'll get a text message. You will come, you will collect a box of food, and that box of food is meant to last you and your family for a certain period of time. And then you get another message telling you to come back and collect another one. So a much more centralized and a much more formalized distribution mechanism than what has existed in Gaza until now. And it's the centralization of the process that's the problem here? That's one of the biggest problems.

4:22You look at the crowds, it's not surprising that these centers were overrun. People have not had access to aid for months in Gaza. It's been under a near total Israeli blockade since March 2nd. only two of the four distribution centers opened on Tuesday. So unsurprising that there were huge crowds and that it was very difficult to control them. That's one issue. A second issue is what these centers are handing out, the boxes of food that Palestinians have received so far. They contain dried pasta, rice, flour, things like that, mostly dry goods that still need to be cooked, still need to be prepared, right?

5:02You need clean water, you need fuel if you want to make pasta or rice or things like that. And those things aren't being distributed. Those things are in very short supply in Gaza. So giving people a box full of dried pasta is not necessarily going to feed them. Those are some of the logistical issues here. And then there's the bigger overarching issue, which is that all of this is controlled to some extent by the Israeli army. It's backed by the Israeli government. And that has led to criticism from the United Nations and from elsewhere from people who say that this plan is not impartial, it's not a neutral way to distribute aid.

5:37It is a distraction from what is actually needed, which is a reopening of all the crossings into Gaza, a secure environment within Gaza, and faster facilitation of permissions and final approvals of all the emergency supplies that we have just outside the border and needs to get in. And for these critics, it's not just the question of whether Israel can distribute enough aid to Gazans. It's also a question of what is the ultimate aim here. And if all of these distribution centers, for example, are set up in the southern part of Gaza, it starts to look like a plan to lure people from northern Gaza into the south and then refuse to allow them back into the north.

6:18It starts to look like a plan for population transfer for ethnic cleansing in parts of Gaza. And how does Israel's government respond to those kinds of accusations? There have been two main arguments that we've heard in recent weeks, one of them on the question of whether this aid mechanism is sufficient. Officials like Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, they insist that there's still plenty of food in Gaza, a claim which is false, but a claim that he and many other officials have repeated. So we supplied them with about 1.8 million tons of food and aid. That's an enormous amount.

6:54And that's why you didn't have mass starvation at all. Now, again, it's not true to say that there isn't hunger in Gaza. People have died of malnutrition. Many of Israel's closest allies in Europe, even the United States, have been increasingly critical of Israel's blockade of Gaza, and they are increasingly worried about the situation there with regards to people going hungry. But that is one argument from the Israelis. And then the second way that they defend this is by arguing that distributing aid through the UN, which happened previously, allowed Hamas to divert, to steal some of that aid and use it to feed its own fighters in Gaza.

7:35It does stand to reason that it's happened. I mean, Hamas has been able for 20 months to continue to feed its militants in Gaza. It's obviously getting food from somewhere. So I think it's reasonable to think that there is some diversion going on. But the Israelis haven't demonstrated that it's happening at a massive scale. And there's also no reason to think that this new plan will prevent it from happening either. And another of the controversies around all of this is about the foundation itself. Who are they? Who's backing them? Where are they from? That's a very good question. No one quite knows the answer to that.

8:09The foundation itself was established in Switzerland in February, according to commercial records in Geneva. And then it's also incorporated in the United States as well. There has been some talk that the Swiss office might shut down because Swiss authorities, according to news reports, have been considering an investigation into just who is behind this organization, where the funding is coming from. We don't know where the funding is coming from. The foundation is very coy. It claims to have received$100 million in donations from European governments, but it hasn't offered any detail. And with all of these questions swirling, we've gotten to the point where even the U.S.

8:50State Department is now distancing itself somewhat from the effort. Tammy Bruce, a spokesperson for the department, saying, you know, this isn't a State Department initiative. We have nothing to do with it. That's despite the fact that privately American officials have been urging the UN and other aid agencies to work with this new foundation. They've been lobbying European countries to donate money to the effort. There's American backing for this. But I think the launch, the rollout has been so shambolic that even the Trump administration feels the need to create some public distance. So given that shambolic start, what happens now?

9:27I think there are two big questions going forward. The first is whether this foundation can actually stand up and do what it's promised to do. I mean, it's said in the space of a few weeks, it hopes to be able to feed 1.2 million people. That's only about half the population of Gaza. But there's reason to doubt that it's even going to be that successful. So we'll see how much it's able to expand. We'll see if it's able to rein in these chaotic crowds and establish a more organized aid distribution mechanism. Second question is whether this is going to be obviated altogether by a new agreement between Israel and Hamas.

10:09There are ongoing negotiations being mediated by Steve Whitcoff, Donald Trump's Middle East envoy. And what they are talking about is part of their discussions about getting to a new, at least temporary, ceasefire in Gaza is unwinding this foundation entirely and putting the UN back in charge of aid distribution. So it may be that after all of this controversy, that its work winds down and we go back to the status quo ante. Greg, thanks very much for joining us. Thank you, Jason.

11:08agreement. Many had reason to applaud. There had been three years of fierce argument on how to make governments more responsible and less selfish when the next pandemic strikes. Your adoption this morning of the WHO pandemic agreement will rank among the most significant achievements in the history of this organization and of global health. Not everyone was clapping though, and one very important potential partner in achieving that global goal wasn't even in the room. On the very first day of Donald Trump's second presidency, he issued an executive order, one of many, and this one withdrew America from the World Health Organization and from negotiations to craft a new pandemic treaty.

11:58David Rennie is our geopolitics editor. He also actually withdrew from a related set of international health rules that America had pushed for under Joe Biden that actually made it much more important for countries to report new viruses. Donald Trump accuses the WHO of mismanaging the COVID-19 pandemic under China's influence and also wanting too much money from America. So that leaves the world preparing for what is inevitably the next pandemic without the biggest funder and the most important scientific backer of global public health, America. And getting away from Mr. Trump's specific hangups about this pandemic treaty, what do its other opponents have against it?

12:41Donald Trump has specific beefs about China's control over the WHO. But actually, this pandemic treaty has been a focus for a lot of wild, if often quite vague claims by populists, not just in America, but also in Europe. Back in 2024, you had a fringe candidate for the American presidency, who said that this agreement is a power grab by international bureaucrats and their bosses at the billionaire boys club in Davos. You get the picture. The problem for the WHO is that that long shot presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, is now Trump's health secretary. And in the UK, for example, Nigel Farage, the right wing political leader, he has got this whole story that the treaty will allow the WHO to impose lockdowns over the heads of our elected national governments.

13:30And that is just flat wrong. The treaty explicitly states that the WHO is not sovereign, that national governments are in charge of those health decisions. So if the arguments against it don't stand up, what do you make of it? Is it promising as written? Look, we heard the applause that greeted the treaty's adoption in Geneva. If you are very pessimistic, you could say that was a little early, that applause, because fundamentally, as we prepare for what we know will be the next pandemic, the job of scientists around the world is to balance the interests of basically two very different sorts of countries.

14:06You have developing countries where new pandemic viruses may well emerge, and those are basically places with rural areas where people live close to wild animals or to farm animals with weak health systems. And then you have another group of countries, much richer countries, which is typically where the sorts of vaccines and drugs you need to resolve a pandemic are found and their interests clash. And so fundamentally, the last three years have been spent with a row between the global north and the global south, to use the jargon of the UN. Really, these bitter divisions between high and low income countries And the hardest part actually does remain ahead.

14:47There's about another couple of years to work out the details of something that sounds very boring. It's called the pathogen access and benefit sharing system. But actually, that's the core of this. If we get this right, then the promise is that poor countries will have a reason to report viruses quickly and rich countries will then respond less selfishly. And that will be good for the whole world. I wouldn't characterize it as boring if the stakes are as high as they're probably going to be. Of the wrangling that's left, what needs to be hammered out? So the argument you heard from quite a lot of emerging countries in Asia, in Africa is, we find these viruses, we hand them over, and then your companies turn them into multi-billion dollar profits, and then don't allow us access to those same life-saving cures.

15:32So there's been a long-running argument where emerging economies say, okay, point one, you should pay for that access to those virus samples. Why should we give you them for free when we can't even get the drugs that profit from them? Point two, we have our own pharmaceutical industry. So that would certainly be countries like India, South Africa. So when a pandemic strikes, you should remove all the barriers around patents and intellectual property and let everyone make these drugs as a public good. The rich world in these really painful negotiations over the last three years over this treaty.

16:05Their response was, if you take away any chance to make profits, then companies have no reason to invest large amounts of money in the sorts of vaccines that will be needed in a real hurry to get the pandemic fixed next time. So what was clearly needed was a grand bargain. And the promise of this treaty is a bargain. The bargain is basically the kind of countries where viruses may emerge, will report them fast, and they will hand over samples quickly and without demanding payment. In return, rich countries and big drug companies will guarantee that 20 % of whatever they produce, whether it's vaccines, therapies, or tests for that pandemic, will be handed over to the WHO, 10 % for free, 10 % at cost, and the WHO will distribute those to developing countries, to poor places.

16:54That's the bargain. And what about compliance? You have to admit that things were quite chaotic and fairly self-interested during the last pandemic. What reason to believe things would be stuck to if it came to it again? We live in the real world, right? And you're quite right, Jason. The pandemic last time, the world was not at its best. We saw rich countries hoarding more doses than they needed. We saw really bitter rows. The WHO doesn't have a police force. It doesn't have an army. It can't make governments keep these promises. And the reality is that if you're a national government and your country is panicking, you are under a lot of pressure to look after your own people first.

17:30But the fundamental bargain does make sense. There is something in it for the global south. There is something in it for rich countries. And so at a minimum, we live in a very ugly, very troubled time where all kinds of people are saying that selfishness, America first, me first, whatever is the plan, that that is the new world order. this painful negotiation basically was a test for the idea of rational self-interest and it survived and frankly in these troubling times sometimes just avoiding failure is the win David thanks very much for your time thank you

18:22This is Storehouse. As you probably know, this is in 15 ,000 square metres, what was the broadcast centre for the Olympics. For many museums, items are out of sight and out of mind in storerooms. Caitlin Talbot is a culture correspondent for The Economist. But the Victorian Albert Museum, or V &A, is giving people the chance to browse the eclectic contents of its vaults. We had two choices, really, two options. One was to just find a relatively inexpensive but very, very secure warehouse-type facility, probably somewhere outside London. Or, if we're going to keep it in London, which we were very, very keen to do...

19:05Tomorrow, the V &A Storehouse, a new facility, will open in the Olympic Park in London. The building will hold more than half a million works, meaning that around 25 % of the V &A's 2.8 million items will be publicly accessible, up from 2%. And a couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be shown around by Tim Reeve, the museum's deputy director. This is where visitors will come in. And it's quite an unprepossessing building on the outside because it's just a tin shed. And when people come in here, I want the beeping of the scissor lifts. You want to hear those sounds and see stuff being moved around because that's the essence of it.

19:44Treasures and oddments of art and design are arranged across four floors. Standing on a glass walkway, I could see plates and paintings and nearly 900 puppets. There were 1 ,500 chairs shaped like thrones and eggs and even cabbages, and 3 ,500 pairs of shoes. It's definitely not a typical museum. Artifacts are strapped to shelves, there are dust sheets that cover precious furniture, and pairs of shoes are nestled in tissue paper. Delicate textiles are stored in dark cupboards to stop them from fading And lights are controlled by motion sensors to reduce items' exposure So if there's no one, you know, after a couple of minutes Nobody walks up and down the aisle, that light will go off Ultimately, the idea is to take visitors behind the scenes of a museum's collection It feels like you've been given sort of behind the scenes or something secretive, doesn't it?

20:37I know It's really striking Yeah, it's the things I want to Institutions have long had to strike the balance between storage and exhibition. When the first public museums opened in the 17th and 18th centuries, everything was on show. But as collections grew, items were relegated to storehouses and basements. But that's changing. Amid complaints that too many interesting artefacts are being kept in the dark, museums have started opening up their stores again. Boyman's Van Bueningen Museum in Rotterdam opened the first public art depot in 2021, which contains about 150 ,000 artworks. The British Museum has pledged to make 1.3 million objects more available to scholars and the public as part of its new archaeological research collection in Reading.

21:27This is one of the biggest, but not the biggest, but this is the first one. It's Picasso's Le Trembler. The V &A's new outpost is a particularly stylish example of how it can be done So every object is barcoded That's one of the things we did when we moved the collection across the Blythe House On a viewing platform, visitors can watch conservators at work Anyone can order an object and have it brought to them You can just come and see what someone's ordered Even if you don't really know why it's been ordered You at least kind of say, OK, I see that somebody's coming in to look at Queen Elizabeth II's wedding dress or whatever it might be Small displays draw visitors towards particular artefacts.

22:05I was drawn to a suffragette scarf and a tiara made from fish scales.

22:15No doubt many museums would like similarly swished facilities, but they come at a big cost. Storehouse in the nearby V &A East Museum, which will display modern culture and design when it opens next year, reportedly cost£100 million, or$135 million. The museum made use of a government grant and fundraising from private donors. Like the V &A, it will be free to visit, but people will have to pay to see special exhibitions. The museum hopes storehouse will attract paying members by letting them closer to objects. Perhaps. Many will simply enjoy the sheer range of items on display. Each floor is intriguing, for you have no idea what's in store.

22:59That's the Whistlestop tour. Wow. Thank you.

23:32Our correspondent is Sarah Larniuk, our senior creative producer is William Warren, and our senior producer is Rory Galloway. Our producers are Henrietta McFarlane, Benji Guy, and Jonathan Day, with extra production help this week from Tamara Jolks-Boer and Alizé Jean-Baptiste. We'll all see you back here tomorrow for the Weekend Intelligence. This week, the heartbreaking and grim mission to identify hundreds of migrants who drowned making their way to Europe 10 years ago.

24:02Thank you.