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Show about aid warehouse causes controversy in Israel

There is nothing ordinary about this advocacy campaign for a large UN institution. The lights dim before a packed audience and a slideshow begins: images of Gaza in conflict, people fleeing their homes, buildings on fire.

Then stands Chris Gunness, the chief spokesman of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the organization responsible for the support and welfare of Palestinian refugees.

“I am a warehouse,” he says. “I am a dying warehouse, the victim of an excruciatingly painful fire that burned me down.”

It is the start of a remarkable 20-minute, one-man play intended for Israeli audiences but so far unwelcome in Israeli theaters. It tells the story of the main UN warehouse in Gaza, a storage point for food and aid for a million Palestinians, and how it was hit repeatedly by Israeli artillery shells, some loaded with white phosphorous, during the Gaza war — how it was set ablaze and burnt to the ground.

“This is a story that “until now has remained buried, untold,” Gunness said at the debut performance of his show at the French Cultural Center, east Jerusalem, on Wednesday night.

His play, Building Understanding: Epitaph for a Warehouse, is a challenge to the criticism the UN has faced within Israel. Many aid organizations and human rights groups highlighting the Palestinian cause have faced increasing opposition since the war, as has Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who authored a highly critical UN report accusing Israel and Palestinian militant groups of war crimes.

Some critics, among them the Israeli right and US neo-­conservatives, regard UNRWA in particular as unfairly and unnecessarily perpetuating the Palestinian refugee issue and their claim to a right of return. The organization insists it was established by a UN resolution and that it offers vital food, shelter and education to millions of people who would otherwise go without. It says the refugee issue should be resolved as part of a final-status Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

Nonetheless, this is an unusual approach for the UN. It began because Gunness, a British former BBC correspondent, was frequently on air during the war highlighting the damage to life and property. That led to an invitation by an Israeli artist to take part in a project about storage space. He offered the story of his warehouse.

There were heckles from the Tel Aviv crowd at the first show, of what was an earlier version of the play. About 20 people, out of an audience of around 100, walked out. The script was refined and the play then booked at two Israeli theatres, in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Both later canceled before the first performance.

“This is about as far away from propaganda as I think you can get,” he said. “It is a genuine attempt to tell a story in an apolitical way. We were overly meticulous in making quite sure there was no politics on both sides.”

They chose not to include clips of UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon talking about the war and the warehouse.
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