Coly Seck (at microphone), Chair of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and Permanent Representative of the Republic of Senegal to the United Nations, briefs reporters with Members of the newly-elected Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP Bureau). At fourth from right is Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations. Credit: UN Photo: Manuel Elías

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 6 2025 (IPS)

A new executive order from the United States White House calls for withdrawing support from major UN entities and a review of all international intergovernmental organizations which the United States is a member of. The U.S.’s orders against the UN Palestine Refugee Agency also do not bode well for ongoing ceasefire negotiations in Gaza.

President Donald Trumps comments that the “US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it,” have also been widely criticized.

On Tuesday, the White House issued an executive order, where they announced that they will pull out from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) effective immediately and called for a review of its membership in UN and other intergovernmental organizations. The executive order singles out other UN entities that needed “further scrutiny”—the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA); and the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The executive order suspended all funding to these organizations.

The executive order also cites that UNESCO has failed to address “mounting arrears” and reform, also noting that it has demonstrated anti-Israeli sentiments over the last decade. A review of the U.S.’s membership in UNESCO would assess whether it supports the country’s interests, and would include an analysis of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli sentiment within the organization.

The United States announced that no funds or grants would go towards the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), citing corruption within the organization and the infiltration of terrorist groups such as Hamas.

UN Secretary-General Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters on Tuesday that in light of the United States’ decision, this would not change the UN’s “commitment to supporting UNRWA in its work”, or the HRC’s importance as a part of the “overall human rights architecture within the United Nations”.

“It has been clear for us that U.S. support for the United Nations has saved countless lives and global security,” said Dujarric. “The Secretary-General is looking forward to speaking with President (Donald) Trump, he looks forward to continuing what was a very, I think, frank and productive relationship during the first term. He looks to strengthening the relationship in the turbulent times that we live in.”

On Wednesday the newly-elected chair of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, Ambassador Coly Seck, Permanent Representative of Senegal, told a told a press conference that it condemned the ban by Israel on UNWRA .

“We strongly condemn Israel’s ban UNWRA which obstructs vital humanitarian cooperation in direct violation of the UN mandate and General Assembly resolutions in stabilizing the ceasefire and supporting Gaza’s recovery. This ban imposed immediately after the ceasefire, deal will deepen Gaza suffering.”

The suspension of aid funding from the United States is already impacting humanitarian operations across different agencies. Dujarric said that the U.S. had committed 15 million USD to the trust fund, of which 1.7 million has already been spent. This leaves 13.3 million frozen and unusable at this time.

Pio Smith, Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) told reporters in Geneva that they had to suspend the programs funded by US grants, which included funds that were already committed to the agency. Smith warned that the lack of funding would impact programs in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Worldwide, more than half of UNFPA’s facilities, 596 out of 982, would be impacted by this funding pause.

Vivian van de Perre, the Deputy Head of its UN Mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, told reporters in New York on Wednesday that the recent pause in funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has forced humanitarian partners on the ground to suspend their work. “…Many of the partners, including IOM (the International Organization for Migration), which is a key partner for us, need to stop their work due to the USAID stop-work order,” she said.

The executive order, along with Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would move into and claim Gaza cast a shadow of doubt over ongoing ceasefire negotiations.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk said that the priority now must be to move to the next phase of the ceasefire, which calls for the release of all hostages and arbitrarily detained prisoners, an end to the war, and the reconstruction of Gaza.

“The suffering of people in the [occupied Palestinian territories] and Israel has been unbearable. Palestinians and Israelis need peace and security, on the basis of full dignity and equality,” Türk said in a statement. “International law is very clear. The right to self-determination is a fundamental principle of international law and must be protected by all States, as the International Court of Justice recently underlined afresh. Any forcible transfer in or deportation of people from occupied territory is strictly prohibited.”

The forcible removal of 2.2 million Palestinians from Gaza that Trump is calling for has been decried and been called a violation of international humanitarian law.

“Any forced displacement of people is tantamount to ethnic cleansing,” said Dujarric when asked about Trump’s remarks. “…In our search for solutions, we must not make the problem worse. Whatever solutions we find need to be rooted in the bedrock of international law.”

Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, briefing reporters after the opening session of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, added his condemnation of Trump’s plan.

Mansour said with regard to the idea of “kicking the Palestinian people out from the Gaza Strip, I just want to tell you that during the last 24 hours, statements from heads of states, of Egypt, of Jordan, of the State of Palestine, of Saudi Arabia and many countries, including countries who spoke in the debate in the room behind us during the meeting of the committee, condemn these efforts.”

He said Trump’s plan has been met with a “global consensus on not allowing forced transfer to take place, ethnic cleansing to take place. We Palestinians love every part of the State of Palestine. We love the Gaza Strip. It is part of our DNA.”

The march of Palestinians from the south to the north of the Gaza Strip following the ceasefire was proof of the people’s committment to rebuild their own homes, Mansour said.

“More than 400,000 of them to go to the rubbles in the northern Gaza in order to start cleaning around their destroyed homes.”

At the White House, Trump’s aids attempted a row back on his comments. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly told journalists that it Trump was proposing to rebuil Gaza, and his press secretary Karoline Leavitt, said “the president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness, who says that unless someone steps in to alleviate the financial crisis facing the U.N. agency, “ it is innocent refugees who will again suffer”. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
JERUSALEM, Jul 3 2015 (IPS)

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) faces a severe financial crisis which could see core services to desperate Palestinian refugees in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank halted unless donors step in before the end of September.

“Currently we have a deficit of 101 million dollars and, as things stand now, UNRWA will struggle to function after September because we don’t have enough money to fund even our core activities for the last few months of the year,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told IPS in an exclusive interview.

“However, following a number of stringent austerity measures already in place, we should be able to continue with life-saving, emergency services to the end of the year,” he added.“As things stand now, UNRWA will struggle to function after September because we don’t have enough money to fund even our core activities for the last few months of the year” – UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness

Due to the financial crisis, the contracts for 35 percent of the 137 internationals employed by UNRWA will end by Sep. 30 without further extension or renewal. The U.N. organisation has taken these steps to reduce costs while trying not to reduce basic services to Palestinian refugees in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank.

“UNRWA is facing financial crises on all fronts. Broadly speaking we have two sources of funding,” Gunness told IPS. “We have our general fund which funds our core services such as education, health relief and social services. Then we have our emergency funds which are for Gaza and the West Bank because there is a blockade and an occupation respectively.

“We’re also dealing with more than 400,000 displaced people in Syria, the 45,000 refugees who’ve fled to Lebanon and the 15,000 who’ve escaped over the border into Jordan.”

Following Israel’s devastating military campaign against Gaza in July and August last year, UNRWA launched a reconstruction initiative, worth 720 million dollars, at the international reconstruction conference in Cairo in October last year.

Part of the money was for rental subsidies for those Gazans whose homes were so damaged that they were uninhabitable and needed a roof over their heads, and part of it was for reconstruction.

“In February this year, we had to suspend that programme because there was a 585 million dollar shortfall. Due to the deficit not one single home in Gaza has been rebuilt, so there is a real crisis in regard to reconstruction,” said Gunness.

Last year in Syria, UNRWA launched an appeal for 417 million dollars but only 52 percent of this money was received. The shortfall forced the organisation to reduce its six cash distribution programmes from six to three.

Cash distributions have become one of UNRWA’s major emergency response programmes in Syria due to so many U.N. installations being bombed and destroyed as a result of the civil war raging there, thereby crippling its normal means of helping refugees.

With the money received for Syria, UNRWA was only able to distribute an average of 50 cents per refugee per day.

“Imagine trying to survive on 50 cents daily. It is almost impossible and although our donors have been very generous, they have not been generous enough,” said Gunness.

In Lebanon, Palestinian refugees from Syria rely on UNRWA for various things, including rental subsidies so that they can have a roof over their heads.

“We had been giving out a 100 dollar monthly rental allowance. This gets you very little in Lebanon, which is an expensive country,” Gunness told IPS.

“When I was last in Lebanon I visited a Palestinian refugee family in the poverty-stricken Shatila camp in Beirut. They were paying 200 dollars a month to live in a room 20 feet by 20 feet [6 metres by 6 metres] with a tiny bathroom and kitchen.

“Their rental subsidy was cut at the end of June and I suspect that family is now living on the street. This is the reality of the crash crisis for just one family of refugees from Syria who have been made homeless.

“And this is only one story that relates to the emergency funding UNRWA receives,” Gunness added.

“In relation to the general side of our funding, what we’ve seen over the years is a gradual increase in the structural deficit of our general fund which has led to the current deficit of 101 million dollars.”

UNRWA’s monthly running costs are 35 million dollars. This includes the salaries of 30, 000 staff members, 22,000 of whom are teachers, as well as the distribution of basic necessities for refugees such as food.

“So, unless someone steps in to alleviate the crisis, even tougher decisions may need to be made in the next few weeks and it is innocent refugees who will again suffer,” said Gunness.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Palestinian children, no matter how young, are often victims of mistreatment in Israeli police and military detention facilities. Photo credit: UNICEF/El Baba

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 5 2015 (IPS)

Palestine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, has sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council demanding that action be taken against Israel over the abuse of Palestinian children after they have been arrested by Israeli security forces.

“Every single day and in countless ways, Palestinian children are victims of Israeli human rights violations, with no child considered too young to be spared the oppression being meted out by the Israeli occupying forces and extremist settlers,”  wrote Mansour. “These crimes committed against our children are intolerable and unacceptable.”

"Every single day and in countless ways, Palestinian children are victims of Israeli human rights violations, with no child considered too young to be spared the oppression being meted out by the Israeli occupying forces and extremist settlers” – Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s ambassador to the United Nations
The letter, sent on May 1, followed the detention of a nine-year-old boy, Ahmad Zaatari from Wadi Joz in East Jerusalem, who had been detained on the night of Apr. 28 for approximately eight hours by Israel police after they alleged that he and his brother, 12-year-old Muhammad Zaatari, had thrown stones at an Israeli bus.

Allegations of the mistreatment of Palestinian children while in Israeli police and military detention facilities in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank are not new.

“The ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalised throughout the process,” said the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in a 2013 report titled Children in Israeli Military Detention, which recommended that 38 changes be made after consulting with Israeli authorities.

However, in February 2015, UNICEF released an update reviewing progress made in implementing the report’s 38 recommendations during the intervening period, which found that “reports of alleged ill-treatment of children during arrest, transfer, interrogation and detention have not significantly decreased in 2013 and 2014.”

In an April 2015 report on ‘Children in Israeli Military Detention’, rights group Military Court Watch (MCW), which monitors the treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention, said that “at least 87 percent of UNICEF’s recommendations lack effective implementation and the ill treatment of children who come in contact with this system still remains ‘widespread, systematic and institutionalised’.”

Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP), a Palestinian human rights organisation specifically focused on child rights has been reported as saying that “Palestinian children are treated as mercilessly as adults. Most troubling are brutal beatings, other forms of torture and prolonged isolation in solitary confinement.”

According to DCIP, unlike Jews, Palestinian parents cannot accompany their children when interrogated, and there are cases of children even younger than 12 arriving at interrogation centres shackled, blindfolded and sleep-deprived.

Most experience physical abuse amounting to torture before, during and after interrogation, and “almost all children confess regardless of guilt to stop further abuse,” said DCIP, adding that the children are often forced to sign confessions in Hebrew which they cannot read or understand.

“Similarities in the situation in East Jerusalem and the West Bank exist because of the inevitable tensions that arise due to the prolonged military occupation,” Gerard Horton from MCW told IPS.

“You can tinker with the system as much as you like but unless the underlying causes are addressed the situation will remain the same.

“Most Palestinian children are arrested near Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. If you insert 500,000 settlers into occupied territory and the security forces’ job is to protect them, this inevitably results in the local population being terrorised,” added Horton.

Meanwhile, Israel was harshly criticised in a report of the board of inquiry regarding incidents during last year’s Gaza war released by U.N. Secretary General Bank Ki-moon on Apr. 27.

The board of inquiry concluded that Israel was responsible for the death of 44 Palestinians, and the injuring of 227 others, when they carried out seven attacks on six U.N. sites in Gaza where Palestinian civilians were sheltering.

Ban condemned the shelling attacks with “the utmost gravity” and said that “those who looked to them [U.N. shelters] for protection and who sought and were granted shelter there had their hopes and trust denied.”

According to Chris Gunness, spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the United Nations provided the Israelis with the exact locations of the U.N. facilities where the civilians were sheltering.

“The U.N. inquiry found that despite numerous notifications to the Israeli army of the precise GPS coordinates of the schools and numerous notifications about the presence of displaced people, in all seven cases investigated by the Board of Inquiry when our schools were hit directly or in the immediate vicinity, the hit was attributable to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces],” said Gunness.

However, the U.N. Secretary General also criticised Palestinian groups for putting some of the U.N. schools at risk by hiding weapons in some of them.

“I am dismayed that Palestinian militant groups would put United Nations schools at risk by using them to hide their arms. However, the three schools at which weaponry was found were empty at the time and were not being used as shelters,” said Ban.

Israeli diplomats put pressure on the United Nations not to release its findings into the war until the Israeli authorities had conducted their own investigation into alleged human rights violations. In September last year, Israel opened investigations into five criminal cases, including looting.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed during the Gaza conflict. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by rockets and attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Palestinian families take shelter at an UNRWA school in Gaza City, after evacuating their homes in the northern Gaza Strip, July 2014. UNRWA has now launched a humanitarian reconstruction programme. Credit: Shareef Sarhan/UNRWA Archives

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sep 17 2014 (IPS)

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has launched an ambitious recovery plan for Gaza following the 50-day devastating war between Hamas and Israel which has left the coastal territory decimated.

However, the successful implementation of this plan requires enormous international funding as well as a long-term ceasefire to enable the lifting of the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the territory.

“We are working on a 24-month plan aimed at 70 percent of Gaza’s population who are refugees but this will only be possible if the blockade is lifted and construction materials and other goods are allowed into Gaza,” Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA), told IPS.

“Taxpayers are being asked once again to fund the reconstruction of Gaza and at this point there are no security guarantees, so a permanent ceasefire is essential if we are not to return to the repetitive cycle of destruction and then reconstruction,” Gunness said.“If Gaza is to recover and Gazans are to have any hope for the future, it is vital that the international community intervenes to help those Gazan civilians who have and continue to pay the highest price” – Chris Gunness, UNRWA spokesman

The attack on Gaza, euphemistically code-named “Operation Protective Edge” by the Israelis, now stands as the most severe military campaign against Gaza since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967.

“The devastation caused this time is unprecedented in recent memory. Parts of Gaza resemble an earthquake zone with 29 km of damaged infrastructure,” said Gunness.

Following the ceasefire, the Palestinian death toll stood at 2,130 and more than 11,000 injured.

Over 18,000 housing units were destroyed, four hospitals and five clinics were closed due to severe damage, while 17 of Gaza’s 32 hospitals and 45 of 97 its primary health clinics were substantially damaged. Reconstruction is estimated to cost over 7 billion dollars.

According to UNRWA, 22 schools were completely destroyed and 118 damaged during Israeli bombardments, while many higher education facilities were damaged.

Some 110,000 displaced Gazans remain in UN emergency shelters or with host families, according to UNRWA.

The reconstruction of shelters alone will cost over 380 million dollars, 270 million of which relates to Palestinian refugees.

According to the Palestinian Federation of Industries, 419 businesses and workshops were damaged, with 129 completely destroyed.

“We have a two-year plan in place which addresses the spectrum of Palestinian needs. Currently we have 300 engineers on the ground in Gaza assessing reconstruction needs,” Gunness told IPS.

Palestinian boy inspecting the remains of a house which was destroyed during an air strike in Central Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, July 2014. Credit: Shareef Sarhan/UNRWA Archives

UNRWA’s strategic approach has been divided into the relief period, the early recovery period and the recovery period of up to four months following the cessation of hostilities.

“The relief period, which will continue for the next four months, involves urgent humanitarian intervention including providing shelter, food and medical needs for displaced Gazans,” said the UNTWA spokesman.

“The early recovery period will continue for the next year and will address the critical needs of the population such as repairing damage to environmental infrastructure, restoring UNRWA facilities and supplementary assistance for livelihood provisioning.

“The recovery period will last for two years and will focus on the impact of the conflict through a sustainable livelihoods programme promoting self-sufficiency and completing the transition of UNRWA emergency and extended-stay shelters back to intended use and full operational capacity.”

One thrust of UNRWA’s programme will focus on protection, gender and disability. The increased numbers of female-headed households and households with disabled men is having an impact on unemployment patterns.

“Women are the primary caregivers and are closely linked to homes and the psychological trauma being exhibited by children. Furthermore, there have already been signs of increased gender-based violence,” explained Gunness.

“We want to focus on raising awareness of domestic violence, how to deal with violence in the home and building healthy and equal relationships through our gender empowerment programme.”

The UN agency will also address food distribution by providing minimum caloric requirements through basic food commodities, including bread, corned beef or tuna, dairy products and fresh vegetables. Non-food items provided include hygiene kits and water tanks for 42,000 families.

Emergency repairs to shelters are also being undertaken with 70 percent more homes destroyed or damaged than during the 2008-2009 hostilities. Emergency cash assistance for refugee families to meet a range of basic needs is also being distributed.

“Due to the enormous damage done to hospitals and health facilities, UNRWA has so far established 22 health points to provide basic health services to the sick and wounded, and health teams have been deployed to monitor key health issues,” noted Gunness.

The psychological impact of the war is another area that concerns UNRWA.  “There isn’t a person in Gaza who hasn’t been affected by the war. In consultation with UNRWA’s Community Health Programme, we have hired additional counsellors and youth coordinators who will provide a range of services to groups and individuals.”

“If Gaza is to recover and Gazans are to have any hope for the future,” said Gunness, “it is vital that the international community intervenes to help those Gazan civilians who have and continue to pay the highest price.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Members of Abu Sheira's family in front of the tent they set up in the grounds of Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY, Sep 8 2014 (IPS)

“When the [Israeli] shelling started, I gathered up my family and headed for what I though was a safe place, like a school, but then that became overcrowded and lacked sanitation, so we ended up in the grounds of the hospital.”

Islam Abu Sheira from Beit Hanoun, a city on the north-eastern edge of the Gaza Strip, was speaking to IPS in front of what has been his family’s makeshift ‘home’ at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for the last two months. His eyes misted over as he recalled his devastated home and his efforts to find a safe refuge for his family."I found no other safe place to shelter in but Al-Shifa Hospital. Together with our seven children we fled into the hospital grounds and slept our first night under trees to escape the Israeli missiles that were destroying whole areas, killing entire families" – Islam Abu Sheira, a refugee from Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip

In his forties, Islam described his family’s ordeal after Israeli shelling left them homeless and they first sought refuge in a school run by UNRWA, the U.N. relief and development agency for Palestinian refugees, and were then forced by overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions to move out and seek shelter elsewhere.

“I found no other safe place to shelter in but Al-Shifa Hospital. Together with our seven children we fled into the hospital grounds and slept our first night under trees to escape the Israeli missiles that were destroying whole areas, killing entire families, ” said Islam,  adding that “during the war, the only thing we were looking for was a place that could protect us from the shelling.”

Like the majority of Palestinian families whose homes were destroyed, they have lost their belongings and, for the time being, their chances of living a life of dignity. Most families in the Gaza Strip were forced to leave their homes so quickly that they had no time to take anything with them.

“We simply have no livelihood and my children sleep every night on the ground without even a blanket to cover them,” lamented Islam. “We have been living a primitive life since we fled our home without even taking the clothes we need.”

As the numbers of people escaping the shelling mounted, so did the difficulty of sheltering them. Schools did their best, but there were insufficient basic necessities and medical supplies, and they were housing four or five persons, if not more, in each classroom.

Palestinian families whose homes were destroyed by Israeli shelling of Gaza sheltering in a UNRWA school. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

Jamila Saad, a housewife who is taking care of her 12-member family and also fled to one of the UNRWA schools, told IPS: “The school was receiving more and more refugees, and we and the other refugee families were sharing one toilet. We need a better life for our children and we hope that our home will soon be rebuilt so that we can begin a new life there in our new home.”

The complex and harsh conditions that the Palestinian refugees are suffering in schools and other shelter centres has pushed most international organisations to provide the refugees with as much aid as possible, but this is far from finding a final solution for the refugees’ suffering.

The conditions of the thousands of refugees who have lost their homes has placed the new Palestinian government before an enormous challenge and a huge responsibility to provide these refugee families with care and a secure environment, as well take on the responsibility of implementing the reconstruction programmes financially aided by the European Union and donor states in accordance with ceasefire agreement brokered in Cairo between Israel and Hamas, especially in terms of the reconstruction of Gaza.

Mufid al-Hasayna, Minister of Public Works and Housing in the new Palestinian unity government, told IPS that “the amount of destruction of houses and economic facilities is massive, and the population of Gaza is living under hard conditions, so we are working hard to improve the living conditions of people. We are working on programmes to start reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and rebuild destroyed houses and

Al-Hasayna believes that the blurred vision Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have of their future after 50 days of war and their constant fear of being retargeted by the Israeli occupation forces have only added to a worsening of their situation.

Amjad Shawa, Director of the Palestinian NGO Network, told IPS: “The harsh circumstances that the Gaza Strip underwent over the 50 days of the Israeli occupation’s war reduced the population’s access to water and food and threatened people’s security, while the bombing of residential high ‘towers’ housing dozens of families has left serious impacts on civilians.

According to Shawa, the housing situation is now all the more dramatic because, even before Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge’, the Gaza Strip was already suffering from the deficit of 70,000 housing units that had been destroyed in the 2009 and 2012 wars.

“Following the two wars, scheduled housing projects to rebuild the infrastructure were not implemented, and the deficit of housing units has reached a state that has put the population in a situation of real disaster,” Shawa told IPS.

He called on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to form an independent body of Palestinian civil society organisations to create a plan for reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.

According to a report prepared by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), in June 2014 the Gaza Strip was home to an estimated population of 1.76 million living in a coastal area that extends along the Mediterranean Sea and covers approximately 365 square kilometres with a maximum width of 12 kilometres.

The PCBS believes that Gaza Strip’s narrow surface area and high population has contributed to some extent to the distribution of people in large blocks and increased its population density, turning the Strip into one the most densely populated areas in the world.

Population density in the Gaza Strip has reached 2,744 per square kilometre, and experts say this means that food, health and education should be the top priorities for the future development agenda of decision-makers.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Soundus, a young girl being treated in hospital for injuries from Israeli shelling of Gaza (August 2014). Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY, Aug 16 2014 (IPS)

“My child became blind and lost the ability to speak, his dad died and his three brothers are seriously wounded. He still has not been told about the loss of his dad,” says the mother of 7-year-old Mohamad Badran. 

Mohamad is in hospital for treatment after being seriously injured in Israel shelling of Gaza. “My only way to communicate with him is by hugging him,” his mother adds.

Israeli air attacks and shelling in Gaza have left more than 1,870 dead and thousands injured. They have caused damage to infrastructure and hundreds of homes, forcing a large number of families to seek shelter in schools run by the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).Some of the children have suffered serious injuries which cannot be treated in Gaza due to the limited medical infrastructure and capacities caused by the Israeli blockade.

In a news note, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that Israeli airstrikes and shelling have taken a “devastating toll … on Gaza’s youngest and most vulnerable.” It said that at least 429 children had been killed and 2,744 severely injured.

Some of the children injured have suffered serious injuries which cannot be treated in Gaza due to the limited medical capacities caused by the Israeli blockade.

According to UNICEF, about 400,000 children – half of Gaza’s 1.8 million people are children under the age of 18 – are showing symptoms of psychological problems, including stress and depression, clinging to parents and nightmares.

Monika Awad, spokesperson for UNICEF in Jerusalem, told IPS that 30 percent of dead as a result of the Israeli military attacks are children, and “UNICEF and its local partners have been implementing psychosocial support programmes in Gaza schools where refugee families are sheltering.”

”We have a moral responsibility to protect the right of children to live in safety and dignity in accordance with U.N. charter for children’s rights,” she added.

However, the acute psychological effects of the Israeli attacks Gaza that have emerged among children, such as loss of speech, are among the biggest challenges that face psychotherapists.

Dr Sami Eweda, a consultant and psychiatrist with the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (a local civil society organisation working on trauma and healing issues), told IPS: “When the Israeli war against Gaza ends, psychotherapists will grapple with many expected dilemmas such as the cases of the murder of entire families and the murder of the parents who represent the central protection and tenderness for the children. Such terrible cases put children in a state of loss and shock.”

According to Eweda, “we first need to stop the main cause of these traumas and psychological problems, which is the Israeli war against Gaza, and then begin an emergency intervention to support children’s health and treat traumas and severe psychological effects, including the loss of speech, which is considered as one of the self-defence mechanisms for overcoming traumas.”

Throughout the Gaza Strip, where entire neighbourhoods such as Shujaiyeh and Khuza’a have been destroyed by the Israeli invasion and heavy bombardment, access to basic services is practically impossible.

Displaced children in a UN-run school in the Shujaiyeh neighbourhood of Gaza (August 2014). Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

People in these areas have been suffering difficulties in accessing drinking water and have been living in an almost complete blackout since the Israeli shelling of the power station which was the sole source of electricity in besieged Gaza.

Social Watch– a network of civil society organisations from around the world monitoring their governments’ commitments to end poverty and achieve gender justice – Thursday called on the international community to declare the Gaza Strip an “international humanitarian disaster zone”, as requested by Palestinian NGOs.

“The unrestricted violation of international law and humanitarian principles adds to the instability in the region and further fuels the arms race and the marginalisation of the issues of poverty eradication and social justice that should be the main common priority,” said Social Watch.

“The recurrence of these episodes in Gaza is the result of not having acted before on similar war crimes and of not having pursued with good faith negotiations towards a lasting peace,” it added.

In a press release, Save the Children, the world’s leading independent organisation for promoting children’s rights, said: “Children never start wars, yet they are the ones that are killed, maimed, traumatised and left homeless, terrified and permanently scarred.”

“Save the Children will not stop until innocent children are no longer under fire and the root causes of this conflict are addressed. If the international community does not take action now, the violence against children in Gaza will haunt our generation forever.”

In an interview with IPS, Save the Children’s spokesperson in Gaza, Asama Damo, said: ”We call for a permanent ceasefire and for lifting the siege on Gaza to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid and basic services to children.”

“We also need the international community to intervene to end the catastrophic humanitarian situation and fight the skin diseases that are widely spreading among the refugees at UNRWA schools due to overcrowding and congestion.”

According to UNRWA, 87 of their schools are being used as shelters by the refugees, half of whom are children under the age of 18. Ziad Thabet, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education in Gaza, told IPS:

“Israel deliberately targeted educational institutions and the education sector in general; large proportion of those killed and wounded are children and school students. Many schools and kindergartens were attacked.”

In the current disastrous situation in Gaza, it seems not only that the burnt bodies of Gaza’s children are the heritage of war, but also that their educational and health future is being burned.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Following an Israeli airstrike, Palestinian youth inspect the building their families lived in. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY, Jul 22 2014 (IPS)

As a result of over two weeks of Israeli bombardment, thousands of Palestinian civilians have fled their homes in the north of Gaza and sought refuge in schools run by the UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

Among the worst affected are Gazan children who have been forced to live in constant fear and danger, according to Dr. Sami Awaida, a specialised child psychiatrist for the Gaza Mental Health Programme – a local civil society and humanitarian organization that focuses on war trauma and mental health issues concerning children and adults in Gaza.“Children in Gaza have already suffered from two recent violent and shocking experiences in 2009 and 2012 … This trauma now re-generates previous pain and shock and also leads to a mental state of permanent fear and insecurity among children here” – Dr. Sami Awaida, a specialised child psychiatrist for the Gaza Mental Health Programme

Describing the impact of the current trauma, Awaida told IPS:  “Children in Gaza are suffering from anxiety, fear and insecurity because of this war situation.  The challenge we now face as mental health practitioners is ‘post-traumatic disorder’.”

“This means that children in Gaza have already suffered from two recent violent and shocking experiences in 2009 and 2012,” he continued. “This trauma now re-generates previous pain and shock and also leads to a mental state of permanent fear and insecurity among children here.”

Since Monday July 7, Israel has subjected the Gaza Strip to a severe military assault and engaged with the Palestinian factions in a new round of violence.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has so far reported 230 Palestinians killed; most of them are entire families who were killed in direct shelling of Palestinian houses. Meanwhile, the number of injured has risen to 2,500. Many of the injured and the dead are children.

Hospitals in Gaza are currently suffering from a severe shortage of medical supplies and medicines. Ashraf Al-Qedra, spokesperson for the Gaza Ministry of Health, has called on the international community “to support hospitals in Gaza with urgent medical supplies, as Israel continues its military attacks, leaving more than 800 houses completely destroyed and 800 families without shelter.”

Since Israel began its current offensive against Gaza, its military forces have been accused of pursuing a policy of destroying Palestinian houses and killing civilians. Adnan Abu Hasna, media advisor and spokesperson for UNRWA in Gaza, told IPS that “UNRWA has officially demanded from Israel to respect international humanitarian law and the neutrality of civilians in the military operation.”

He added: “UNRWA stresses the need to fulfill the obligations of the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to immediately stop violence, due to the increasing number of children and women killed in the Israeli striking and bombardment of Gaza.”

Assam Yunis, director of the Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, spoke to IPS about the stark violations of human rights and the urgent need for justice and accountability. “The current situation is catastrophic in every aspect,” he said.

“Human rights abuses are unbelievable and these include targeting medical teams and journalists, in addition to targeting children and women by Israel.  This points to clear violations of international law as well as war crimes.  Israel must be held legally accountable at the international level.”

Analysing the situation, Gaza-based political analyst and intellectual Ibrahim Ibrash says he believes that “Israel will never manage to end and uproot both Hamas movement and the Palestinian resistance from Gaza. On the other hand, the Palestinian militant groups will never manage to destroy and defeat Israel.”

He told IPS that the consequences for the Palestinians at the internal level after this military aggression ends will be critical, including “a split between the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority; many people will be outraged with the Palestinian leadership, and this of course will leave Gaza in a deplorable state.”

This critical crisis in Gaza comes against a backdrop of a continued blockade imposed on the territory by Israel, widespread unemployment, severe poverty, electricity cuts, closure of borders and crossings since 2006, destroyed infrastructure and a stagnant Gazan economy, combined with a lack of political progress at the Israeli-Palestinian political level.

The real truth that no one can deny is that the civilian population, including women and children, in Gaza are the real victims of this dangerous conflict.

The refugee camp of Yarmouk represents one of the most severe examples of the humanitarian crisis in Syria, with foreign aid agencies unable to enter the opposition-controlled area that been effectively besieged since December 2012.

UNRWA food distribution Jan. 31, 2014 in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, Damascus. Credit: UNRWA

Responsibility for the plight of the primarily Palestinian Yarmouk population has been almost exclusively directed toward the Syrian government, whose forces control the periphery of the camp.

Approximately 18,000 residents are besieged within Yarmouk as fighting continues around and sporadically within in the area.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which has been operating in Syria since 1950, is presently the only significant organisation directly providing the civilians of Yarmouk with aid.

The biggest issue has been a lack of cooperation from the parties of the conflict to permit safe access to the camp.

While stressing that UNRWA appreciates that the Syrian government this week permitted some aid to enter the camp, Christopher Gunness, UNRWA spokesperson, told IPS that, “The large crowds of desperate people waiting to receive food parcels attest to the massive needs that have yet to be met.”

Between Jan. 17 and Jan. 21, UNRWA was only able to bring a few hundred aid parcels into the camp. On Thursday, Jan. 30, however, Gunness said that UNRWA had managed to enter Yarmouk and successfully distribute 1,026 food parcels. Aid distribution continued on Friday, and the Syrian government has expressed its intent to facilitate an accelerated distribution process."What is needed at this stage is not simply negotiating for weeks to get a few parcels in, what is needed is a paradigm shift." -- Nadim Houry

Nevertheless, there are still tens of thousands of people whom this aid did not reach. It is virtually a “drop in the ocean compared with need,” explained Gunness.

“As each food parcel contains food for an average family for only 10 days, it is imperative that continuous access to Yarmouk is authorised and supported, so that UNRWA can alleviate the deep and prolonged suffering caused by lack of food,” he said.

The people of Yarmouk face what Gunness describes as “unimaginable human suffering”. Children are experiencing various symptoms of malnutrition, such as rickets and anaemia, women have died in childbirth because of a lack of medial care, there is no clean water nor electricity, and aid deliveries have slowed to a trickle. At present, reports indicate that at least 49 people have died of malnutrition and government snipers have targeted people foraging for food in nearby areas.

Getting aid in is on a “convoy to convoy, day to day basis” says Gunness. Presently, Yarmouk can only be accessed via two main routes, both of which are strictly controlled through a series of tight checkpoints. In addition, fighting in close proximity to aid convoys has thwarted successive efforts to deliver humanitarian assistance. In one case, gunfire hit a bulldozer that was clearing debris for the convoy.

On Jan. 17, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Navi Pillay issued a report describing the humanitarian situation in Yarmouk. In this report, which OHCHR reaffirmed to IPS as still applicable on Jan. 28, Pillay described the situation as “desperate” and indicated that government forces and affiliated militias appear to be imposing “collective punishment on the civilians in Yarmouk”, adding that such actions which impede “humanitarian assistance to civilians in desperate need may amount to a war crime”, and is certainly against international law.

“Aid access is a priority, but what is needed at this stage is not simply negotiating for weeks to get a few parcels in, what is needed is a paradigm shift … that this is not something you negotiate on, this is a right under international law, Nadim Houry, Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) deputy director for its Middle East and North Africa division, told IPS. “What is needed right now is to establish modalities for repeated and efficient humanitarian aid.”

Looking forward, talks between the Syrian government and the Syrian opposition have the potential to open Yarmouk to more comprehensive incoming aid and the exit of civilians. Though a deal has not been reached at the Geneva II talks, both sides have discussed relief for besieged areas, notably the Old City of Homs.

The head international mediator for the U.N., Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, has optimistically called these discussions a positive step forward, necessary for further agreement.

“We want the Geneva II talks to make the issue a priority and to demand that the regime end government sieges imposed on opposition held towns. Humanitarian organisations must have unfettered access to these areas,” Geoffrey Mock, Syria country specialist for Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), told IPS.

“Humanitarian access has really been quite limited,” Houry said. “[HRW workers] have been able to get in [the country], but not the unrestricted access we had asked for.”

This kind of restriction has also been experienced by AIUSA, which has only been able to support the Syrian civilians through their presence in neighbouring countries.

The Syrian mission to the United Nations did not respond to an IPS request for comment on the humanitarian and human rights situation in Yarmouk, as well as the inability for humanitarian groups to enter the country.

Men warm their hands by a fire in Homs, Syria, which endured two months of artillery bombardment in 2012. Credit: Freedom House/cc by 2.0

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 2013 (IPS)

The almost three-year-old Syrian civil war has been a “silent war on human and economic development”, destroying the ability of ordinary Syrian citizens to maintain basic livelihoods, according to a report launched here Wednesday by two United Nations agencies.

“There is an informal rule that it usually takes a country around seven years to recover for each year of civil war,” Michael Bowers, the senior director of Strategic Response and Global Emergencies at Mercy Corps, a humanitarian organisation that works closely with Syrian refugees in neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan, told IPS.“The humanitarian situation in Syria continues to deteriorate rapidly and inexorably." -- U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos

“And although it’s hard to justify this type of estimate, if we look at past civil conflicts such as Yugoslavia or Iraq, it usually does take at least a decade for a country to recover.”

The massive displacement of Syrian citizens and widespread job loss have contributed to a “dramatic drop in consumption … [that] tumbled by 18.8 percent in 2012 … and 47 percent in 2013,” according to the report, by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Private consumption, the U.N. researchers note, is a direct measure of household welfare.

In addition, as many as 2.3 million jobs have disappeared since the beginning of the war, primarily due to the large-scale shutdown of economic activities in highly populated areas.

The report comes at a critical time. World leaders are currently struggling to come up with a date for the “Geneva 2” conference, which aims to pave the way for a political solution to a conflict that has left at least 100,000 people dead.

Even if that conference happens and even if a political solution is found, however, experts say the socioeconomic impact of the civil war will go on for decades. According to Alex Pollock, the director of the microfinance department at the UNRWA, the U.N. agency providing assistance to Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, it will take up to 30 years for the Syrian economy to recover to its 2010 growth rate of five percent of gross domestic product.  

Hidden impact

The economic impact in Syria is not the end of the story. The war has also had a devastating effect on key social welfare factors, including education, health assistance, and population displacement, that are going to negatively impact the country’s overall level of human development.

According to the report, as of July 2013 nearly 3,000 schools had been partially or totally damaged, many of which were eventually turned into shelters for the thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs). School dropout rates have also heightened the deep educational crisis that is plaguing the country: by the second quarter of 2013, 49 percent, or one out of two children, had been forced to quit their school.

And while the conflict has taken a toll on school buildings across the country, medical facilities have not been spared either. The report estimates that over 40 percent of the country’s hospitals are currently out of service, making it increasingly difficult for ordinary Syrians to receive basic medical assistance, not to mention the more serious health threats posed by larger and more devastating epidemics.

Although the international community, with the U.S. and the European Union at the forefront, have been providing millions of dollars in humanitarian aid and funds to foster economic development, this assistance is unlikely to pull the Syrian socioeconomic situation out of the abyss.

International assistance

International agencies such as the UNRWA have been engaged in a number of economic development projects aimed at helping ordinary Syrians to at least maintain a basic level of livelihood, including building up microfinance projects, education facilities and health infrastructure.

“We have been receiving a lot of support, primarily from the Europeans, but also from some of the Arab countries in the region,” Pollock told IPS. “And although the assistance from the Arab world has been rather small, countries such as Saudi Arabia have provided food assistance to those who have been displaced within the country.”

The Syrian government itself has been quite supportive of UNRWA’s work, Pollock says.

“We’re primarily engaged with the governing Ba’ath Party, which is also our main contact at the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” he says, noting that the central government has also facilitated assistance to the large Palestinian refugee population in the country.

But despite the political support these organisations have been receiving, the future of the Syrian economy remains grim.

The escalation of the civil conflict has resulted in armed factions “destroying the economic and productive assets of the country,” the report argues. This has pushed the Syrian population to rely on agriculture, a highly unstable and unpredictable sector in the country.

As of Nov. 6, the war has produced nearly three million Syrian refugees, of which only 2.2 million have been granted refugee status, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Nearly 40 percent of these are children below the age of 12.

The catastrophic humanitarian crisis, however, does not seem to be moving toward any solution. On Monday, the U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos told the Security Council behind closed doors that the “humanitarian situation in Syria continues to deteriorate rapidly and inexorably,” according to her spokeswoman Amanda Pitt. The number of Syrian people in need of humanitarian assistance may have risen to over nine million, Pitt said.

World powers, however, are still struggling to coordinate strategies to achieve a political solution to the conflict. On Tuesday, U.S, Russian, and U.N. diplomats met in Geneva to try to fix a date for the “Geneva 2” conference, but to no avail.

During a U.S. Department of State background briefing on the negotiations, a senior U.S. official noted that despite the lack of an agreement now, “the conference will take place before the end of the year.”

Medical services are increasingly difficult to provide in Syria. Above, a field hospital. Credit: FreedomHouse/CC by 2.0

By Mutawalli Abou Nasser
DAMASCUS, Jun 5 2013 (IPS)

It was nine in the morning when the shell landed in front of nine-year-old Hella al-Abtah’s house in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. Hella survived the initial blast but was critically wounded in the head, and her father rushed her to the Palestine Hospital, blood pouring from the laceration.

Doctors at the hospital managed to stabilise Hella, but the relief was short-lived. Because of a chronic shortage of critical medical supplies and frequent power cuts, they could not complete even routine procedures. Hella passed away, hers one of many needless deaths due to collapsing medical services in the besieged Yarmouk camp.

Before the Syrian uprising began in March 2011, Yarmouk, which, with a population of 125,000, was the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, was a bustling hub in Damascus and home to one of the busiest markets in the city.

Now Yarmouk has become a violent battlefield subject to daily bombardment. Until 2012, Palestinian camps had mainly stayed out of the Syrian conflict, but many are now fully engaged in the fighting.

Since opposition fighters established a permanent presence in Yarmouk, the Syrian army’s siege on the camp has resulted in a complete ban on any medicine or medical supplies entering the camp."It is simply impossible for us to deliver sometimes even the most basic services."
-- Abdullah Hariri

The collective punishment enforced on the community, as well as the direct targeting of individuals or groups offering humanitarian support, has severely weakened medical services available to the camp’s embattled residents.

Losing services

The only place where Yarmouk’s residents can still receive medical treatment is the Red Crescent-run Palestine Hospital. The other two main hospitals were shelled and destroyed by fighter jets and artillery, and many medical staff have fled the camp over the past four months.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA), the main body that offers social services such as education and health care to the Palestinians, has withdrawn its entire staff from Yarmouk camp due to the deteriorating security situation. With their evacuation, the community lost many essential health services.

And while doctors, nurses and medical students continue to treat patients in the Palestine Hospital in spite of the risks, the siege on the camp has rendered much of their work impossible, creating shortages in supplies from blood to electricity to the most basic medicines.

“It is simply impossible for us to deliver sometimes even the most basic services, because we have been starved of the essential supplies,” said Abdullah Hariri, a doctor at the Palestine Hospital.

Doctors, nurses or activists who have attempted to smuggle medical supplies into the camp have been targeted as well, with some killed and scores in prison, and hospitals in areas under rebel control, such as Palestine Hospital, are regularly shelled.

Staff have been threatened and intimidated on multiple occasions by security service personnel to abandon their humanitarian mission.

Violations from both sides

Elements of the armed opposition are no less innocent, having abused, threatened and extorted medical professionals in the camp, stolen resources and fuel from the hospital and even opened fire within the building.

“Once, some fighters came and demanded we hand over one of our staff, saying she was a collaborator,” said a doctor at the hospital, who asked to be called by his nickname, Abu Hakam. “This is such a loathsome accusation when you consider [that] she, like us, has chosen to stay, serving the people of the community.”

When hospital staff protested and barred the entrance to the hospital, fighters threatened the staff with guns, forced their way through and kidnapped the nurse. Although she was eventually released after extensive interrogations, such incidents increase the vulnerability of medics who remain active in Yarmouk.

Power shortages and electricity cuts are also hobbling efforts to offer even the most basic medical services.

“Because of the cuts in power supply to the camp, we have to use the electrical generators,” described Hussam al-Hariri, a doctor at Palestine Hospital. “This requires fuel, and as everyone knows, the regime blocks the entrance of fuel to the camp.”

“We have to buy fuel at exorbitant prices, even though we said from the outset that we don’t have any political stance,” Hariri added.

On top of all these challenges, Yarmouk camp has become refuge of sorts to many civilian refugees and opposition fighters from the suburbs and countryside south of Damascus. What remains of the camp’s debilitated medical services has to serve these communities as well as the Palestinians who refused to leave.

Despite having been reduced to a most basic level of operations by both the government’s siege on Yarmouk and aggression from members of the armed opposition, for the residents and refugees in Yarmouk, the camp’s medical infrastructure nevertheless remains critical, for they have little else.

Hazem Maher, 16, from Hebron, works as a porter in a fruit and vegetable market in a city near Ramallah. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, Jun 4 2013 (IPS)

Hazem Maher, 16, from Hebron in the southern West Bank, works a backbreaking 12-hour day in the fruit and vegetable market in the city of El Bireh, next to Ramallah. He earns just over 15 dollars a day as a porter.

“My father is blind and both my parents are unemployed. I am the sole provider for my parents and my three brothers and two sisters. They depend on me to be able to eat,” Maher told IPS, adding that poor grades and his family’s financial situation forced him to drop out of school.

“I work from 6 am to 6 pm,” he described. At night, he sleeps with other boys because the drive from Hebron to Ramallah takes one and a half hours. “Transportation by service taxi is expensive,” he added."[My family] depend[s] on me to be able to eat."
--Hazem Maher, 16

Maher is not alone in the work he does and the life he leads. Physical and verbal abuse, exploitation, long hours, little pay, exposure to danger, a missing childhood, and a future scarred by physical and psychological damage are what some of the thousands of Palestinian child labourers in the Palestinian territories face.

“If the Israeli occupation continues and Palestinians are unable to implement a national strategy and enforce legislation protecting children in the workforce, the future of these children will be seriously compromised,” said Osama Damo, from the aid organisation Save The Children in Gaza.

“The physical and psychological damage they experience could affect their ability to be good parents and this damage could pass on to the next generation,” Damo told IPS.

‘I have no other choice’

Anis Issa, 17, is also from Hebron. He too works as a porter at the fruit and vegetable market to help support five brothers and supplement the wages of his father, who works in a photography office.

“At the end of the day I’m very tired. I hate this work but I have no other choice. I don’t even think about going to university because my family could never afford that,” Issa told IPS.

Thousands of Palestinian children are currently employed as child labourers in Gaza and the West Bank, though hundreds more are believed to be excluded from those statistics.

According to a report from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) on Palestinian children, based on information collated in 2011, eight percent of Palestinian children were employed in Gaza and three percent in the West Bank during that year.

Six and a half percent of the children employed were aged 5-11, and less than five percent were between 12 and 14 years. These figures, however, exclude children working in family-owned businesses or on agricultural land and construction sites. Children enrolled in primary United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools were not included in the statistics.

The percentage of children aged 5-14 years attending school and also engaged in child labour was 5.9 in 2010 – 7.8 percent in the West Bank and three percent in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian children can be found working as street and kiosk vendors, car cleaners, newspaper sellers and porters. They also work in construction and agriculture and sell goods at border crossings, traffic lights and in markets, either working for themselves or for employers.

Push factors

According to Palestinian law, children younger than 15 cannot legally work. From the ages of 15 to 18, they are employable with certain limitations and restrictions, according to Damo. However, “this law is not being enforced adequately, and the children are being exploited as adults,” Damo told IPS. “They are working long hours for less pay than an adult because they are more profitable.”

One reason children enter the labour market is because they drop out of school. In the Palestinian territories, the secondary school dropout rate for boys was 1.9 percent and 2.1 percent for girls.

“High levels of unemployment and poverty, exacerbated by illiteracy, are forcing Palestinian children out of school and into the labour force to try and help provide for their families,” Damo explained. He added that because of the Israeli blockade and greater unemployment and poverty, the situation in Gaza is worse than in the West Bank.

Poverty and unemployment in Gaza have been exacerbated by a ban on exports, severe restrictions on fishermen off the Gaza coast, and Palestinians’ inability to reach their agricultural fields in the Israeli-imposed buffer zone.

The separation barrier in and around the West Bank also prevents Palestinians from working in Israel. In addition, “numerous checkpoints and barriers make transportation longer and more expensive for school children, leading many to drop out from school,” Damo elaborated.

Other factors behind the children working and often spending hours in the streets are the lack of public recreational facilities and a high population density, of which children comprise 60 percent. Meanwhile, high birth rates ensure that few Palestinian children ever experience the luxury of a room to themselves at home.

In order to tackle the problem of child labour, Save The Children has embarked on a three-year project, funded by the European Union, in partnership with a number of non-governmental organisations and the Palestinian ministries of social affairs, labour and education. “Our aim is to develop a national strategy for implementing and enforcing child labour laws and protecting children,” Damo described.

Israeli's blockade of Gaza is crippling the territory. Above, selling yoghurt in Gaza in an attempt to make some sort of living. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, May 23 2013 (IPS)

Israel’s crippling blockade of the coastal territory of Gaza is pushing desperate young Palestinians to ever more extreme measures in the search for livelihoods, despite an agreement granting Gazans greater access to their agricultural land.

In search of work, some Gazans try to enter Israel by jumping the fence that separates it from Gaza. Others continue to be shot dead or are seriously injured by Israeli soldiers as they try to farm land bordering the fence, and still others who choose an underground path die when tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt collapse.

Yet an agreement between Hamas and Israel’s COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories) following a ceasefire in November stated that Gazans would be able to access most of their agricultural land in Israel’s self-declared 300-metre buffer zone, which runs along the border, by reducing the zone to 100 metres.

The buffer zone is comprised of some of Gaza’s most fertile land in a territory desperately lacking space. Gaza is one of the most densely populated territories in the world, with more than 1.5 million people squashed into an area 41 kilometres long and six to 12 kilometres wide.

Despite the Hamas-COGAT agreement, “the situation remains volatile and unpredictable, and the farmers are extremely vulnerable,” Muhammad Suliman, from the Gaza-based human rights organisation Al Mezan, told IPS. “Palestinians continue to be shot and killed in and near the buffer zone at certain times, while at other times nothing happens.”

Meanwhile, fishermen at work within the Israeli-imposed fishing zone, which was three nautical miles until Israel announced on May 21 that it would extend the zone to six nautical miles, are also being shot at and arrested.

Forced to rely on aid

A bitter paradox is unfolding in that while Gaza’s economic desperation has been somewhat buffered by a rise in international aid and work by non-governmental organisations in the strip, unemployment has skyrocketed, and Gaza is now one of the world’s most aid-dependent territories.

“More than 85 percent of Gazans are dependent on aid to survive, while youth unemployment stands at over 55 percent,” Suliman said."Wouldn't it be better for Israel to lift its blockade and allow Gazans to be self-sufficient?"
-- Chris Gunness

“The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is going around begging the international community for donations to help Gazans survive economically,” a spokesperson for UNRWA, Chris Gunness, told IPS. “Wouldn’t it be better for Israel to lift its blockade and allow Gazans to be self-sufficient?”

“Unless the blockade is lifted and some of the world’s most entrepreneurial and business-minded people are allowed to leave Gaza in pursuit of business ventures, Gaza will remain increasingly desperate and dependent on international aid,” Gunness added.

Increasing attacks

According to Al Mezan, Israeli naval attacks on Gazan fishermen have escalated since the November ceasefire, including the sinking of six Palestinian fishing boats and damage to nine power generators and 41 lamplights used by fishermen at night during the first week of May. The Israeli navy also shot at Palestinian fishing boats in 13 separate incidents.

Al Mezan stated that last week Israelis shot with machine guns at a group of fishing boats off the coast of Beit Lahiya in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Israeli military boats arrested two men, Mahmoud Zayid, 27, and his brother Khalid, 25, from a small fishing boat, which was about 400 meters off the coast and approximately 1.5 nautical miles south of the Northern Israeli restricted zone.

In another attack on May 19, Israeli naval vessels opened fire at Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of Deir Al-Balah in the Middle Gaza district. The boats were also within the Israeli-sanctioned fishing zone, about three nautical miles from shore, when they were attacked.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Palestinian fishermen were permitted to go 20 nautical miles out to sea. Since Israel imposed the blockade in 2006, the area has been reduced to 6 nautical miles, to devastating effect. In 2006, 2,500 tonnes of sardine were caught, in comparison to 234 tonnes in 2012.

According to the international aid organisation Oxfam, such economic restrictions by Israel are pushing young Gazans to risk their lives by jumping the fence into Israel to seek employment or entering the tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.

Working in conjunction with Oxfam, Al Mezan reported that in the last year 101 people attempted to climb the perimeter fence, with 53 of those younger than 18. And according to Al Mezan’s Suliman, 18 Palestinians were also killed and 26 injured in the tunnels.

In one case last year, a young man, Mahmoud, and two of his friends tried to climb the fence. Mahmoud’s two friends were shot dead by Israeli soldiers while Mahmoud escaped with a bullet injury to his leg. The young man had lost his previous part-time job at a café, where he earned 4 dollars a day. Desperate to help support his large family, Mahmoud had taken the risk of entering Israel.

90 Palestinians, including 11 children and three women, were killed in the buffer zone in the last three years, and as Suliman pointed out, “while some of these were fighters killed during Israel’s military assault on Gaza last November, most of those killed were civilians.”

Reconstruction at the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in Lebanon. Credit: Ray Smith/IPS

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Mar 7 2013 (IPS)

A top United Nations official is warning that the plight of Palestinian refugees is being neglected amidst the ongoing crisis in Syria.

Currently in Washington, Filippo Grandi, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is urging U.S. lawmakers to maintain financial support for the roughly five million UNRWA-registered Palestinians in the Middle East, even as broad budget cuts threaten U.S. overseas aid.

“From a strategic interest point of view, the biggest competitor for attention and resources to the question of Palestinian refugees today is the crisis in Syria, which is monopolising political attention, funding and humanitarian efforts,” Grandi said at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.The problem is the conflict in Syria has become so big, so widespread, so violent and so present to everyone’s lives that keeping the Palestinians out has become increasingly difficult.

“Of course Syria is important, but I encourage people not to forget that the Palestinian refugee element in this crisis is extremely sensitive.”

As profound changes sweep across parts of the Middle East, Palestinian refugees have once again found themselves stuck in a position of stagnation, their interests marginalised. A present-day reminder of the war of 1948, they remain scattered across an unstable region, particularly vulnerable to events in Syria.

There are an estimated 500,000 Palestinian refugees living in Syria – mostly descendants of families who fled their homeland as a result of the Israel-Arab wars of 1948 and 1967 – where they have lived in relatively stable conditions compared to their compatriots in Lebanon, Jordan the West Bank and Gaza – poor but given access to jobs and services by the Syrian regime.

The changes that the “Arab Spring” brought to the region have had little positive effect on Palestinian lives. In the case of Syria, it has only made things worse.

Grandi says his office estimates that almost half of the 500,000 Palestinians in Syria are currently displaced.

“They cannot go to Jordan, as Jordan has issued a very stringent policy of no admission for Palestinian refugees from Syria,” he says. “They claim they are already doing enough for the hundreds of thousands of Syrians coming over the border and for the two million Palestinian refugees they have already hosted in the country over the last six decades.”

He notes this “worrying policy” is preventing desperate people from fleeing violence across borders.

The only way out, then, is to go to Lebanon. An estimated nearly 30,000 Palestinians have done so, joining the almost 200,000 Syrians that have likewise fled to that country.

“These Palestinians are a heavy burden for Lebanon, however,” Grandi says. “There is a very sensitive balance between the communities and religions, which makes the presence of more Palestinians more sensitive than in any other country. Even without this influx, they are already living in appalling conditions and in a very difficult situation.”

Neutrality under fire

Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, UNRWA has sought to remain neutral, as has the Palestinian leadership. Even Hamas, whose political headquarters had long been hosted in Damascus by the al-Assad government, moved its offices to Qatar more than a year ago.

This was due to the deteriorating security situation and to avoid any repeat of the violent backlash directed at Iraq’s once-protected Palestinian community, for the perceived favouritism allotted them during the reign of Saddam Hussein.

Indeed, Palestinians have a difficult history of being involved in the conflicts of others. This includes in Lebanon, Jordan and the first Persian Gulf War, during which Yassir Arafat sided with Saddam Hussein, resulting in the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the Gulf States allied with Kuwait.

Today, however, the conflict in Syria is complicating Palestinian lives throughout the region.

“The problem is the conflict in Syria has become so big, so widespread, so violent and so present to everyone’s lives that keeping the Palestinians out has become increasingly difficult,” Grandi says.

“Today, there are groups of Palestinians that are supporting the [Syrian] regime and some groups that are siding with the opposition.”

Perhaps the most difficult situation, he notes, is in a suburb of Damascus called Yarmouk, an unofficial camp densely populated with the largest Palestinian refugee community in Syria. It is a strategic area that is considered vital to controlling Damascus, and the fighting there has been particularly intense despite its neutral designation.

“Devastating” cuts

Here in Washington, broad budget cuts kicked in on Friday, forcing 85 billion dollars in spending reductions across all federal agencies. Some worry these cuts, known as “sequestration”, could now threaten vital U.S. aid to UNRWA.

Although it is not known yet the extent to which sequestration could affect foreign aid coffers, Chris McGrath at UNRWA’s Washington office emphasises that a cut of just five to 10 percent would be “devastating”.

“This would literally mean bringing a stop to services on the ground,” McGrath told IPS.

“We have a 67-million-dollar budget deficit this year, and any cut would mean closing schools or health care centres. Our services are always increasing – especially in Gaza, where the economy is so poor, and in Syria. Funding is always our biggest challenge and now is no exception.”

Amidst the broader discussion over how or whether to cut U.S. foreign aid spending, many groups are ramping up efforts to highlight the significant returns the United States receives for its foreign spending.

“The U.S. has invested a lot of time, energy and resources in terms of developing a ‘smart power’ way to engage the world, and an important part of that is being able to work with countries that need support – in terms of moving toward democracy, bringing people out of poverty, and moving toward conditions where peace can prevail,” Don Kraus, president of Citizens for Global Solutions, a grassroots organisation headquartered in Washington that focuses on encouraging cooperative and multilateral foreign policy, told IPS.

“If you take away this funding, it will only come back to haunt us, in terms of higher military expense, greater conflict and mass migration. The value we get from spending less than one percent of our budget on foreign aid is incredibly important.”