AMMAN -- UNRWA launched on Tuesday a $246 million emergency appeal for 2007 to help counter rapidly deteriorating living conditions for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, which officials say have slumped to levels unseen since 1967.
Ending a two-day meeting of the agency's donors and refugee-hosting countries, UNRWA officials said the current crisis in the Palestinian territories would further exacerbate if immediate and urgently required assistance was not delivered.
They urged donor countries to provide funds for the appeal -- which is UNRWA's largest to date.
In May, UNRWA doubled its emergency appeal to $170 million in response to worsening living conditions in the Palestinian territories. Until September, donors had covered 73 per cent of the appeal.
The agency -- the biggest humanitarian actor in the occupied Palestinian territories -- had to bear the major burden of the impact of the growing crisis.
Over the past year, UNRWA repeatedly called for increased assistance for people suffering under dire conditions as a result of the political stalemate and the suspension of international aid to Palestinians after the Hamas-led government assumed power in March 2006.
"Unfortunately... the choices made by the international community in 2006 have led us to a very difficult situation, a situation of deep crisis, of unprecedented crisis," said UNRWA Deputy Commissioner General Filippo Grandi.
"It is an economic crisis... and this has had a devastating impact on the livelihoods of individual households," he added.
Grandi warned that this could be the last chance, adding "this may not be enough to help the victims of the current situation."
Acknowledging that the appeal was the highest ever requested, Grandi and other UNRWA officials said the past year's crisis has raised the percentage of those living under the poverty line in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to 65 per cent. UNRWA officials said the appeal would not solve the growing problem, but rather "just a little more than mitigate the worst effects of this present crisis."
The aid-freeze has made the past year the worst for Palestinians living in the territories in at least six years, officials have said. They attributed the "unbearable" living conditions to the international financial blockade and Israeli measures, such as restrictions on Palestinians' freedom of movement, limitations on their access to jobs, markets, health services and schools.
UNRWA Director of Operations in the West Bank Andres Farge said there was a sharp increase in Israeli mobile checkpoints, accompanied by an increase in Israeli army activities ranging from higher arrest rates to demolition of homes, as well as an increase in killings of Palestinians.
Officials said the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Palestinian territories -- due to a growing fiscal crisis facing the Palestinian Authority, which has thus far been unable to pay its 160,000 staff and on whom another one million family members depend for support -- upped the level of unemployment to 40 per cent.
The humanitarian agency has been forced to offer assistance to refugees and non-refugees and even try to come up with job opportunities for those who have become unemployed or have not received their salaries for months.
The majority of Palestinians are now dependent on food and cash handouts, according to a press statement.
"Unbearable economic pressure has been applied to a people under occupation. Those who have paid the greatest price are the vulnerable -- the poor, the sick, the elderly and the children," said Grandi.
He urged the international community and donor countries, especially the Arab world, to dig deep into their pockets and help the agency continue its badly needed assistance.
"We urge donors to respond to this appeal generously. Until the crisis is solved, we have to continue to provide assistance to refugees," he said.
The money would be spent on food aid, job creation and emergency cash assistance, and respond to a considerably increased demand on health services.
"We realise we are placing a huge demand on our donor countries by asking for an enormous amount of money, but it is an enormous problem created out of political failure... the situation in Gaza is desperate and disgusting. Everything is at a breaking point," said John Ging, director of UNRWA's operations in the Gaza Strip.
UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) provides education, healthcare, social services and emergency aid to over 4.3 million refugees living in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. It is the largest UN operation in the Middle East, with over 27,000 staff, almost all of them refugees themselves, working directly to benefit their communities.
By Alia Shukri Hamzeh
© Jordan Times 2006
