19/11/2004

UN launches emergency appeal for occupied territories

The UN has launched an emergency appeal today to help tackle the "worst levels of destruction" so far in the four-year Palestinian uprising against Israel.

The UN has called for $185.8 million to allow it to carry out "crucial relief operations" for 1.6 million people in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) claimed that Israel had employed "drastic measures" this year against Palestinian militants firing rockets from Gaza and other security threats. The accelerating levels of demolitions, increasing deaths and injuries, and strict movement restrictions had contributed to ever-growing hardship for the refugee population. More than 2.2 million people were now surviving on less than $2 per person per day, the UN said.

“The statistics of death, destruction and poverty in this appeal do little to convey the real suffering of the population of the occupied territory,” Peter Hansen, Commissioner-General of UNRWA.

“Whole neighbourhoods in Jabalia and Rafah camps (in Gaza) have been flattened. Our schools are seeing an entire generation grow up in an environment of terrifying violence. The curse of endemic poverty now touches two thirds of the population.”

(gmcg/sp)

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