[News] UN warns that Gaza food aid about to run out
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed May 15 11:33:34 EDT 2019
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/un-warns-gaza-food-aid-about-run-out
UN warns that Gaza food aid about to run out
Maureen Clare Murphy
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy> - 14 May 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Every one in two Palestinians in Gaza is food aid dependent, and the
largest provider of humanitarian assistance in the territory is warning
that it may soon be unable to provide that aid.
UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees, stated
<https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/more-one-million-people-gaza-%E2%80%93-half-population-territory-%E2%80%93-may-not-have>
on Monday that it must secure $60 million by June to be able to provide
food aid to one million Palestinian refugees in Gaza – half of the
territory’s population.
Some 620,000 Palestinians in Gaza survive on $1.60 per day. An
additional 390,000 survive on around $3.50 per day, according to the agency.
It is the latest plea
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/high-cost-keeping-gaza-under-siege>
by a UN body for increased international assistance to Gaza, where, as
UNRWA puts it, “financial support has been outpaced by the growth in needs.”
Israeli siege increases need
Those needs are a direct consequence of Israel’s land, sea and air
blockade on the territory, now in its 12th year, and successive Israeli
military offensives that have wrought widespread destruction and greatly
diminished Gaza’s productive sector.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has said
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-blockade-icrc/israels-gaza-blockade-breaks-law-says-icrc-idUSTRE65D00R20100614>
that Israel’s blockade of Gaza violates the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Israel’s use of force in the territory has been the subject of multiple
UN commissions of inquiry.
“From fewer than 80,000 Palestine refugees receiving UNRWA social
assistance in Gaza in the year 2000, there are today over one million
people who need emergency food assistance without which they cannot get
through their day,” the agency stated.
More than half of Gaza’s population is unemployed, one of the highest
rates in the world. International aid and remittances from abroad “have
held Gaza back from the brink of total collapse,” according to UNRWA.
Last year the US, formerly UNRWA’s single largest donor, said that it
would stop funding the agency. In addition to freezing $300 million in
funding to UNRWA, the US cut $200 million in bilateral aid to the West
Bank and Gaza.
The aid cuts are at once a punishment
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/us-slashes-aid-gaza-hospitals-run-out-fuel>
against the Palestinian leadership for protesting Trump’s recognition of
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/oh-jerusalem-requiem-two-state-solution/22521>
and an attempt to bludgeon Palestinians into submitting to the White
House’s “peace” process and erase
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-israel-hopes-make-palestinian-refugees-disappear>
Palestinian refugees out of existence
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/omar-karmi/jared-kushners-sleight-hand>.
“The American administration’s actions are part of a wider campaign that
aims at imposing a one-sided solution on Palestinian refugees – contrary
to international law, relevant UN resolutions, and the principle of
justice,” the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council stated
<http://mezan.org/en/post/23526> on Tuesday.
The council called on the UN General Assembly “to establish a mandatory
financing mechanism, rather than voluntary state contributions, in order
to secure consistent and sustainable funding of UNRWA,” with an expanded
mandate “to fulfill the legal protection standards that refugees are
entitled to.”
UNRWA – in contrast to the UN High Commission for Refugees, which looks
after refugees from the rest of the world – has no mandate
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-israel-hopes-make-palestinian-refugees-disappear>
to facilitate the exercise the right of return home for refugees.
8.7 million Palestinian refugees worldwide
Today there are 8.7 million Palestinian refugees and displaced persons
worldwide, constituting two-thirds of the Palestinian people.
“Israel’s failure to respect the right to return for Palestinians who
were forced to flee their homes in 1948 is a flagrant violation of
international law that has fuelled decades of suffering on a mass scale
for Palestinian refugees across the region,” Amnesty International
stated on Tuesday.
Every two in three Palestinians in Gaza is a refugee from towns and
villages now inside Israel. For more than a year
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/one-year-gazas-great-march-return>
Palestinians in the territory have protested against the blockade and to
demand their right to return to the lands from which their families were
expelled before, during and after the establishment of the state of
Israel in 1948.
More than 200 Palestinians have been killed during the protests, dubbed
the Great March of Return
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/great-march-return>.
Around 60 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military during
protests in Gaza this day last year, and a further 1,300 were injured by
live ammunition
<https://www.msf.org/gaza-one-year-after-protests-bloodiest-day-palestine>,
making it the bloodiest day yet during the Great March of Return.
The staggering
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/nearly-300-palestinians-killed-29000-injured-2018>
number of casualties during the protests has overwhelmed Gaza’s
healthcare system.
Some 1,700 Palestinians injured during the Gaza demonstrations may
require amputations because specialized treatment for what medical
groups have described as war injuries resulting from Israeli army sniper
fire is unavailable.
The UN is seeking $20 million for Gaza’s medical facilities which are
“under very serious stress,” Jamie McGoldrick, a humanitarian official
with the world body, stated last week
<https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/05/1038101>.
Two thousand Gaza families still displaced
Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
said
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/march-escalations-gaza-result-more-displacement>
that as of the end of April, there was no funding to cover the basic
needs of Palestinians in Gaza still displaced from Israel’s 51-day
military offensive on the territory five years ago.
More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/balance-un-gaza-report-cant-hide-massive-israeli-war-crimes>
during that offensive, and 17,800 homes were destroyed or severely damaged.
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in the summer of 2014 resulted in the
largest internal displacement of Palestinians since 1967, when Israel
occupied the territory, along with the West Bank, the Syrian Golan
Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula (from which Israel later withdrew).
As of February this year, more than 2,200 Palestinian families – or
12,300 people – were still displaced as a result of the 2014 offensive.
Nearly $130 million is needed to address needs resulting from the
offensive, according to OCHA, “including for shelter repair ($75
million), reconstruction of houses ($47 million) and cash assistance
($6.5 million).”
Israel habitually destroys
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/eus-destructive-peace-partner>
Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza and third states pay for its
reconstruction, with no cost to Israel, which controls what raw
materials for reconstruction are brought into the territory.
Gaza’s population is repeatedly brought to the brink before a stop-gap
aid contribution prevents total catastrophe.
Last year
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/critical-funding-shortages-threaten-all-humanitarian-responses-opt>,
OCHA warned that following Israel’s 2014 military assault – after which
third-party states pledged $3.5 billion
<http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/rebuilding-gaza-donor-pledges#1>
to rebuild the devastated territory – “humanitarian financing to the
occupied Palestinian territory has been gradually, but definitively,
decreasing year on year.”
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20190515/03cade9f/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list