Civil Society Organizations Raise Alarm Over World Bank’s Role in Gaza

We, the undersigned organizations, condemn the World Bank’s decision to establish a Financial Intermediary Fund to enable funding for the Trump Administration’s so-called Board of Peace. We are also alarmed that World Bank President, Ajay Banga, joined the Executive Board. We consider the Board of Peace and its underlying Gaza Executive Board an illegitimate and neo-colonial project that seeks to profiteer from an undemocratic version of reconstruction of Gaza. We echo voices of Palestinian people who have decried the Board of Peace for its “exclusion of Palestinians from decisions about their own future.”  

We are deeply concerned by the risks to Palestinian people posed by this World Bank-enabled undertaking. From our work supporting communities harmed by World Bank funding globally, we know that large-scale infrastructure projects carry a high risk of land-grabbing and displacement, loss of livelihoods, resource extraction, and environmental damage. These risks are magnified in Gaza and made worse by the exclusion of Palestinian communities in the proposed governance of reconstruction efforts. Further, the proposed ‘master plan’ for the reconstruction of Gaza appears geared towards commercial gain for real estate developers and demonstrates little consideration for meeting the urgent needs of the local population for basic housing, food, medical or education services in the immediate term. 

It is true that Gaza urgently needs humanitarian aid for reconstruction and rehabilitation; it is also true that Palestinian people living in Gaza should decide how reconstruction money is used and what reconstruction looks like. 

The World Bank should know better. Its staff of development experts must know that its stated commitments to inclusivity, sustainability, and accountability are impossible to reconcile with its support of a large-scale, profit-oriented and exclusionary reconstruction project in a country whose people already face illegal settlements, forced displacement, apartheid conditions, and genocide. In fact, the World Bank’s participation in this project calls into question whether it has abandoned its stated poverty alleviation mandate entirely.

As the Board of Peace plans to meet in Washington, DC this month, we ask for the World Bank to recommit to its own principles of inclusivity, sustainability, and accountability in accordance with international law. Instead of implicating itself in further violations of the rights of Palestinian people, the Bank should support a transparent and rights-respecting reconstruction effort in Gaza, led by Palestinians.

We echo ICJP’s call for “a transparent reconstruction effort in Gaza, unhindered humanitarian aid, fully operational border crossings, protection from unlawful Israeli attacks, justice and accountability for Israeli war crimes, and the right to a sovereign, self-determined Palestinian state.”

Endorsing organizations:

Accountability Counsel

Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)

Asia Indigenous Peoples Network on Extractive Industries and Energy (AIPNEE)

CEE Bankwatch Network

Climate Action Network (CAN) Africa

Community Empowerment and Social Justice Network (CEMSOJ)

fundación Acue

Inclusive Development International

Inisiasi Masyarakat Adat (IMA)

International Accountability Project

Jamaa Resource Initiatives

Jubilee Australia Research Centre

Recourse

SOMO - Center for Research on Multinational Corporations

Urgewald

Uzbek Forum for Human Rights