SHATI CAMP, GAZA: Abd Al-Kari Al-Far arrived at the aid distribution center to collect the food basket he receives from the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency every three months.
Inside there was flour, rice, sugar, lentils and oil, enough basic ingredients to feed him and his family.
“I need this help. Al-Far told Arab News. “It’s not a big deal for many people, but I do not work regularly. This helps me feed my family and my children.”
But Al-Far fears his journey this week to collect the goods in the Shati refugee camp may be his last.
The US has decided to freeze more than half of its first tranche of funding for 2018 to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Aid workers warn that the cut will have a devastating effect on the 5 million people it helps in both the Palestinian territories and Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.The impact is expected to be most severe in Gaza. The territory has been left utterly destitute by an Israeli blockade, a series of brutal wars, and the infighting between between Hamas which rules, Gaza and Fatah, which controls the West Bank. The increased levels of poverty has raised the demand on the services provided by UNRWA.
“I do not know that I will be able to get it again,” Al-Far said, of his supplies. “The (UNRWA) staff here say that the reality is difficult.”
The US State Department said on Tuesday that it would only pay $60 million of an initial $125 million in voluntary contributions to UNRWA for 2018. The money is mainly to pay salaries in schools and health facilities in Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza.
US officials insisted the cut in funding was not to punish Palestinian leaders, who have been enraged by Donald Trump’s decision last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Some members of Trump’s team even called for a complete halt of the funding.
The officials said they want other countries to contribute and for the agency to be reformed. Belgium has already stepped in, offering $23 million.
Matthias Schmale, the UNRWA director in Gaza, told Arab News that the agency provides assistance to one million Palestinian refugees in the territory.
He said they were already struggling as the budget has been declining for years.
“We are extremely worried,” Schmale said. “We are trying to keep our basic services open.”
He said they would ask their other donors to supply their money earlier than normal “while we organize a massive fundraising campaign to replace this cut.”
Even if Washington provided the additional $65 million, the $125 million total would be well below the $360million that the US was expected to provide UNRWA through the whole year, Schmale said.
Fearing the knock-on effects of the budget cut, businesses in Gaza said they would strike on Monday to protest against the “catastrophic collapse” of the economy in the territory.
“The economic situation has been directly affected by the sharp decline in the purchasing power of the Gazans, the decline in the commercial and purchasing sector and the decrease in imports,” Maher Tabbaa, director of public relations at the Palestinian Chamber of Commerce, told Arab News
He said that at the main Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel imports had decreased by more than 40 percent in 2017.
A Palestinian police spokesman in Gaza, Ayman Al-Batniji, said around 100,000 Palestinians were arrested in 2017 because of unpaid debts.
Unemployment rates in Gaza have reached 46 percent overall and 67 percent among graduates. Household food insecurity in Gaza has risen to 50 percent according to aid agencies.
Rahma Dabban, a widow and mother of five, had her financial assistance from UNRWA suspended last year leaving her with just her food basket.
“I am a refugee from a refugee family,” Dabban said. “It is not my responsibility to look for funding. This is the role of states. What I know is that I want to live and that I can feed my children. They can stop it, but they must allow us to establish our state on our land.”
UNRWA was set up by the UN General Assembly in 1949 to provide assistance and protection to Palestinian refugees who had been forced to flee their homes by the war that led to the creation of Israel.
There are now 5 million registered Palestine refugees in the region.
UNRWA’s services include education, health care, aid provision, social services, running the refugee camps’ infrastructures and financial services.
“When they created us, the decision 70 years ago, based on a promise to Israelis and Palestinians to create two states, half of that promise has fulfilled,” Schmale said
“The decision says UNRWA should support the refugees until their state is created, there is no sense that we should be moved to another organization, when the promise the international community has given to the refugees has not been fulfilled.”
‘I need this help’ — Destitute Gazans plea for aid to continue after US funding cut
‘I need this help’ — Destitute Gazans plea for aid to continue after US funding cut
Hamas negotiators ‘not in Doha’ but political office not closed: Qatar
- Qatar hosted the Palestinian militant group since 2012 announced earlier this month it was pausing its mediation efforts
“The leaders of Hamas that are within the negotiating team are now not in Doha,” foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said, adding: “The decision to... close down the office permanently, is a decision that you will hear about from us directly.”
Qatar, along with the United States and Egypt, had been engaged in months of fruitless negotiations for a truce in the Gaza war, which would include a hostage and prisoner release deal.
But the Gulf state, which has hosted the Palestinian militant group since 2012, with Washington’s blessing, announced earlier this month it was pausing its mediation efforts.
“The mediation process right now... is suspended unless we take a decision to reverse that which is based on the positions of both sides,” Ansari said on Tuesday.
“The office of Hamas in Doha was created for the sake of the mediation process. Obviously, when there is no mediation process, the office itself doesn’t have any function,” he added, declining to confirm whether Qatar had asked Hamas officials to leave.
Syrian top diplomat arrives in Tehran for talks
- Sabbagh is in Tehran for his first visit since taking up his post in September to meet Iranian officials, local media reported
Tehran: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi welcomed his new Syrian counterpart Bassam Al-Sabbagh in Tehran on Tuesday, the latest in a series of meetings between top officials from the close allies.
Sabbagh is in Tehran for his first visit since taking up his post in September to meet Iranian officials, local media reported.
Details of his meetings have not yet been disclosed.
Al-Sabbagh’s visit comes less than a week after Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, visited Syria and met with Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Iran.
Over the weekend, Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasrizadeh was in Damascus to hold talks with Syrian officials.
Earlier in October, Araghchi himself traveled to Damascus as part of a regional tour just days before Israel’s first confirmed attack on Iranian military sites.
This attack was a response to a large Iranian missile strike on Israel at the start of the month that was prompted by the killing of commanders of militant groups affiliated with Iran, including Hezbollah, and a commander of the Revolutionary Guards.
It followed an Iranian missile and drone attack against Israel in April that was triggered by a strike on an Iranian diplomatic building in Damascus blamed on Israel.
Iran does not recognize Israel and has made support for the Palestinian cause a cornerstone of its foreign policy since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
As a staunch ally of Damascus, Tehran has supported Bashar Assad during more than a decade of civil war in Syria.
Norway to ask ICJ to step in after Israel bans UNRWA
- Bills passed by Israel’s parliament will stop UN agency from sending vital aid to Gaza
- Norwegian FM: Bills will ‘undermine the stability of the entire Middle East’
London: Norway will ask the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion condemning Israel for ceasing cooperation with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.
Last month, Israel’s parliament passed two bills banning the agency from the country and forbidding state cooperation with it.
There are fears that the bills, due to come into effect within three months, will prevent UNRWA from delivering vital aid into Gaza.
The agency says two-thirds of its buildings have been destroyed in Israel’s invasion of the Palestinian enclave, and 243 staff have been killed.
Norway’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik has held talks at the UN on a draft resolution to urge an advisory opinion from the ICJ to protect the existence of UNRWA.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said: “The international community cannot accept that the UN, international humanitarian organizations, and states continue to face systematic obstacles when working in Palestine and delivering humanitarian assistance to Palestinians under occupation.
“We are therefore requesting the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on Israel’s obligations to facilitate humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population, delivered by international organizations, including the UN, and states.”
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said the Israeli bills would “undermine the stability of the entire Middle East” and have “severe consequences for millions of civilians already living in the most dire of circumstances.”
Norway’s move is being backed by an increasing number of UN figures and member states. UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said at the UN on Monday: “The situation (in Gaza) is devastating and beyond comprehension, and frankly it is getting worse. It is totally unacceptable that it is harder than ever to get aid into Gaza.
“In October only 37 aid trucks reached Gaza, the lowest ever. There is no excuse for Israeli restrictions on aid.”
UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said: “I have drawn the attention of the member states that now the clock is ticking … We have to stop or prevent the implementation of this bill.”
According to the UN Charter, UN buildings are meant to be inviolable during conflicts. After the 2008 war in Gaza, Israel paid the UN compensation amounting to $10.4 million for damage caused to its premises after an investigation determined “an egregious breach of the inviolability of the United Nations premises and a failure to accord the property and assets of the organisation immunity from any form of interference.”
UN says over 200 children killed in Lebanon in under 2 months
Geneva: The UN said Tuesday that over 200 children have been killed in Lebanon in the less than two months since Israel escalated its attacks targeting Hezbollah.
“Despite more than 200 children killed in Lebanon in less than two months, a disconcerting pattern has emerged: their deaths are met with inertia from those able to stop this violence,” James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, told reporters in Geneva.
“Over the last two months in Lebanon, an average of three children have been killed every single day,” he said.
Israeli army says 40 projectiles fired from Lebanon into central, northern Israel
- On Monday, one person was killed and several people injured in two separate incidents
Jerusalem: The Israeli military said on Tuesday that some 40 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into central and northern Israel, with first responders reporting that four people were lightly injured by shrapnel.
“Following sirens that sounded between 09:50 and 09:51 in the Upper Galilee, Western Galilee, and Central Galilee areas, approximately 25 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israel. Some of the projectiles were intercepted and fallen projectiles were identified in the area,” the military said in a statement.
That announcement followed earlier reports that some 15 projectiles fired that set of air raid sirens.
A spokesperson for Israeli first responders said that in central Israel it found “four individuals with light injuries from glass shards.... They were injured while in a concrete building where the windows shattered.”
The Israeli police said they were searching the impact sites from projectiles intercepted by Israel’s air defense systems but did not report any serious damage.
On Monday, one person was killed and several people were injured in two separate incidents, one in the northern Israeli town of Shfaram and the other in the suburbs of Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
The military said Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, which is backed by Iran, fired around 100 projectiles from Lebanon toward Israel on Monday, while Israel’s air force carried out strikes on Beirut.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in October last year in support of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza. Since September, Israel has conducted extensive bombing campaigns in Lebanon primarily targeting Hezbollah strongholds, though some strikes have hit areas outside the Iran-backed group’s control.
