Refugee Assistance
Refugee Assistance
Downhill into the future: Rafah, Gaza 2004
Leave your development indicators at home and look for
de-development indicators because you are going to Gaza.
De-development in the Gaza Strip proceeds apace in the winter of
2004. The process was described by Sara Roy in her 1995 book: The
Gaza Strip—The Political Economy of De-development, Institute for
Palestine Studies.
During the 1990s, the strength of the economy could be assessed
by counting the number of workers going into Israel each day and
the price of donkeys at the Friday donkey market in the Shajiah
quarter of Gaza town. If donkey prices went up, this meant that
people didn’t have the money to buy cars so they resorted to
donkeys.
Today the number of workers going into Israel is half that of 10
years ago and donkeys are everywhere. The economy has been further
harmed with the leveling of citrus groves and olive trees as a
“security measure” by the Israeli military. These were once were a
major source of income for Gaza. The Israelis also control how far
the fleet of small fishing boats can go out to sea and some days
forbid them to go out at all, cutting off another source of
income.
Sure, in Gaza town there are a few internet cafes, pizza parlours
and new modern hotels. But the hotels are empty since getting into
Gaza isn’t easy.
A trip there for internationals takes a lot of planning. The first
step is getting permission from UN security or a valid invitation
from a local organization to be in Gaza and then a five-day
security check by the Israeli authorities. Once this is done, your
name is put on a list at Erez Crossing point in the north of
Gaza.
When you get to Erez, you present your passport and your details to
be checked by computer just like at an international airport and
the list of approved visitors to Gaza is checked to see if your
name is really on it. If everything is in order, each vehicle is
given a form that approves passage into Gaza. This is handed over
to a soldier at a final roadblock. These days most people,
including some NGO representatives, are refused permission to
enter.
Getting out of Gaza is equally involved. At a gate across the road
on the Gaza side, a soldier scans your documents then the computer
check, the same as when arriving. There is the added “precaution”
of an under vehicle search and the rub down with the plastic gloves
of the vehicle’s interior looking for traces of undesirable
chemicals and the wait for the testing of the gloves. Any luggage
has to go through the x-ray machine and then is opened for
inspection. When all this is done, you get a departure form to be
presented to a soldier at a final checkpoint.
Trying to get to Rafah or almost any other place in the Strip is
the next hurdle. The main north-south road may be closed for the
day even for UN vehicles. The Gaza Strip, only 30 kms long and 5-8
kms wide is split in three with Israeli checkpoints along the way
near Netzarim, Kfar Darom and Morag settlements. Sometimes the
Strip is even divided into four.
Local cars with only one person cannot drive on the road past Kfar
Darom. So young men and boys line up along the road offering to
accompany you past the settlement for one shekel. It’s one way of
income generation. After the short ride, they then line up on the
other side of Kfar Darom and offer their services to vehicles going
the other way.
Getting to Rafah
A 30-minute trip from Gaza town to Rafah can take up to two hours.
A return trip that used to be made in a morning may take the whole
day.
Nowhere is de-development more obvious than in Rafah, a district of
163,000, including 135,000 Palestinian refugees, on the border with
Egypt.
Rafah has never been a tourist attraction but for a few years in
the 1990s there was some development, new buildings and a better
face to the city. In the winter rain, Rafah looks bleak and
forbidding. The old Salahadin gate where one could cross to Egypt
on foot has been blocked by mounds of earth, the houses closest to
the border are gone leaving a bare strip of sand between the ruins
of 3-4 storey buildings and a new 5-meter-high rusted steel wall
running along the border replacing a see-through wire fence.
Israeli military observation towers dot the border between Egypt
and Gaza.
The destruction of buildings and the new wall is an Israeli effort
to stop the digging of tunnels under the international border and
prevent what Israel says is smuggling and a flow of arms from Egypt
to Gaza.
Whatever the reasons for the devastation of Rafah, it has left
thousands of innocent families without shelter and their meager
possessions ground into the sand.
While humanitarian aid is urgently needed to alleviate the
day-to-day suffering of Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, it
is only a stopgap. The real need is to search for solutions to the
Palestinian refugee issue as a whole, for more than 6 million
refugees living in Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and
further afield.
Under the “rocks”
“I was under the rocks,” says 4-year-old Manal. Her family’s home
was demolished for the second time by Israeli incursions into Rafah
refugee camp. The rest of her family escaped but they couldn’t find
Manal. She was buried under the debris of the house. They found
her, hearing her calls of distress.
On May 2, 2001, Israeli bulldozers destroyed 25 houses in an area
of Rafah, Gaza called Brazil camp which is built on the site where
Brazilian soldiers were stationed as part of the UN Emergency Force
after the 1967 War. One of the houses belonged to Manal’s family.
With cash aid from UNRWA, the family rented a small house in
Shaboura quarter of Rafah as a temporary home. But in September
2002, the bulldozers came again. Her family lost its home and
several family members were injured.
Now they are living in the Tel el Sultan area of Rafah where UNRWA
has built a new housing complex for 97 families. Manal and her
family are among the almost 10,000 Palestinian refugees in Rafah
who had been made homeless since September 2000. (See photo of
Manal and her sisters)
UNRWA has also built new housing projects in Khan Younis and Deir
el Balah for hundreds of families. Additional houses are being
built, rebuilt or repaired in Khan Younis, Rafah, Bureij, Jabalia,
Beit Hanoun for the almost 20,000 refugees whose homes have been
demolished or badly damaged.
Since the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000,
Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza have been
attacked repeatedly by Israeli military forces. Damage to refugee
shelters by indiscriminate as well as targeted military attacks is
especially severe in the densely built-up refugee camps where
makeshift constructions are less resistant to attacks by heavy
ammunition and weaponry. And even well built structures as shown in
the accompanying photos have been heavily damaged or destroyed.
(See al-Majdal issue No. 20 of December 2003 for details on the
destruction and rebuilding of Jenin Camp, West Bank.)
Destruction has not been limited to official refugee camps in the
Gaza Strip. Refugees living outside camps and some 2,000
non-refugees have had their homes demolished or heavily
damaged.
Half rely on food aid
In addition to rehousing refugees, UNRWA, the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, is supplying food on a
bi-monthly basis to 124,000 families in the Gaza Strip, 18,000 of
them in the Rafah area.
Food parcels usually contain 50 kg of flour, five kg of rice, five
of sugar, two liters of cooking oil, one kg of powdered milk and 5
kg of lentils. More than half of the population of the Gaza Strip
is totally dependent on food aid.
The 4,500 refugees who returned to the Gaza Strip from Canada Camp
in Egypt (See al-Majdal issue No. 19, September 2003, ‘Don’t
confuse relocation with return—18 years to move two kilometers’)
have not escaped. Their homes in the Tel el Sultan area of Rafah,
were built with funds from Canada and Kuwait. Several young men
have been killed and a few houses damaged. They also suffer from
restrictions on movement in the Gaza Strip and the economic crisis
with up to 60 per cent of the whole Gaza population having no
regular work.
As part of its emergency relief activities in the Gaza Strip, UNRWA
has been providing temporary jobs for unemployed breadwinners,
indirectly supporting 160,000 persons in the Gaza Strip. While the
homeless await new shelters, UNRWA has, along with other agencies
such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, provided
tents, blankets, kitchen kits, medicines and drinking water. UNRWA
also provides cash assistance to help them temporarily rent new
quarters if they cannot move in with relatives or neighbors.
Muhammad Najjar and his wife who moved back to Gaza from Egypt in
2001 remain virtual prisoners in Tel el Sultan. Their daughters and
grandchildren live in other parts of the Gaza Strip but he and his
wife can’t go to visit them or they him because of Israeli
roadblocks and road closures.
The Najjars also have a son who had been going to Bir Zeit
University in the West Bank but even when he was there, the family
could only get together every six months because of travel
restrictions for a young man going between the West Bank and Gaza.
Now Hassan is studying engineering at Concordia University in
Montreal, Quebec. At least, says Mr. Najjar, his son is safe and
can start building a future for himself.
|
Completed
|
Under Construction
|
Tendered
|
Design stage
|
Total
|
Tel el Sultan
|
97
|
|
|
|
97
|
Rafah
|
|
103
|
122
|
100
|
325
|
D/Balah
|
19
|
|
|
|
19
|
Middle Camps
|
26
|
|
|
36
|
62
|
Jabalia/B/Hanoun
|
16
|
|
|
36
|
52
|
K/Younis
|
125
|
86
|
|
116
|
327
|
Total
|
283
|
189
|
122
|
288
|
882
|
Health
More than 1,200 refugees in the Gaza Strip have sustained permanent disabilities since the beginning of the current intifada.
Thousands of children at UNRWA schools have needed counseling because of psychological stress. In the month of March 2003 alone, 1,300 students from West Bank and Gaza received psychological counseling because of aggressive behavior, hypertension, communication difficulties and a wide range of other symptoms including anxiety attacks, stuttering and bedwetting. The cost of the program in Gaza is $1.5 million for 2004.
Increasing rates of poverty and malnutrition, ongoing damage to the environmental health infrastructure and the increase in demand on health services for patients requiring emergency care and long-term follow-up as a result of current violence have put a strain on all health services. To meet the demand, 138 additional medical staff have been hired under UNRWA’s emergency Employment Generation Program in Gaza. This program has also been used to hire additional staff for non-UNRWA health facilities.
Education
The continuing emergency has resulted in severe disruption to the education of tens of thousands of children. Some 24,000 teaching days have been lost at UNRWA schools in Gaza since 2002 and as a result there has been a marked deterioration in test results showing an erosion of students’ skills making them ill prepared to continue their education.
UNRWA is providing remedial education to 39,000 pupils from grades four to nine and has embarked on a program of developing distance learning materials so children can continue their studies at home. The Agency is also providing short-term courses for 142 new trainees through its Gaza Vocational Training Centre to provide young refugees with marketable skills.
More than 1,200 refugees in the Gaza Strip have sustained permanent disabilities since the beginning of the current intifada.
Thousands of children at UNRWA schools have needed counseling because of psychological stress. In the month of March 2003 alone, 1,300 students from West Bank and Gaza received psychological counseling because of aggressive behavior, hypertension, communication difficulties and a wide range of other symptoms including anxiety attacks, stuttering and bedwetting. The cost of the program in Gaza is $1.5 million for 2004.
Increasing rates of poverty and malnutrition, ongoing damage to the environmental health infrastructure and the increase in demand on health services for patients requiring emergency care and long-term follow-up as a result of current violence have put a strain on all health services. To meet the demand, 138 additional medical staff have been hired under UNRWA’s emergency Employment Generation Program in Gaza. This program has also been used to hire additional staff for non-UNRWA health facilities.
2004 UNRWA emergency funding requirements, US$ millions
|
Gaza
Strip
|
West
Bank
|
Food
security
|
36.9
|
18.6
|
Emergency
employment
|
41.2
|
20.7
|
Cash/inkind
assistance
|
12.8
|
13.8
|
Health
|
1.4
|
3.9
|
Psychosocial
|
1.7
|
1.9
|
Education
|
1.3
|
0.8
|
Shelter
|
30.5
|
2.3
|
Total
|
125.5
|
62.0
|
ICRC Ends Large-scale Relief Distribution
At the 2003, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced the end of large-scale relief distribution to Palestinians in West Bank towns and villages. Since June 2002, the ICRC had provided urgently needed aid to some 300,000 Palestinians in the West Bank.
ICRC emphasized that “Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, it is the primary responsibility of Israel, the occupying power, to ensure that the population of occupied territories has sufficient access to food, water, health services and education. Any security measures taken by Israel to defend its citizens against attacks should not have a disproportionate impact on Palestinian civilians living in the occupied territories.”
The ICRC will continue existing regular programs including helping improve access to drinking water and provision of relief aid to Palestinian families whose homes have been destroyed. The Red Cross will also intensify efforts to closely monitor the economic situation of the Palestinian population in the 1967 occupied territories.
UNRWA Suspends Emergency Food Aid in Gaza
At the end of March 2004 the UN Special Coordinator's Office (UNSCO) said new Israeli-imposed restrictions on staff movements may force humanitarian agencies to cut back on assisting Gaza's civilian population. Nearly all humanitarian aid vehicles from the UN and other agencies were banned from crossing at the Erez checkpoint in March.
Several days after the UNSCO statement, UNRWA took the decision to stop distributing emergency food aid to some 600,000 refugees in the Gaza Strip, or approximately half of the refugees receiving UNRWA food aid in the occupied territories due to Israeli restrictions. Stocks of rice, flour, cooking oil and other essential foodstuffs have been fully depleted. Under normal circumstances, UNRWA delivers some 250 tons of food aid per day in Gaza alone as part of a wider program of emergency assistance to refugees, initiated in 2000.
"The suspension of UNRWA's emergency food aid in the Gaza Strip will further distress communities already struggling to cope with unrelieved economic hardship and malnutrition,” said UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen. “If the new restrictions in Gaza continue, I fear we could see real hunger emerge for the first time in two generations. Israel's legitimate, and serious, security concerns will not be served by hindering the emergency relief work of the United Nations. I appeal to the authorities to lift these restrictions and enable us to resume our food distributions in Gaza."
Sources: UNRWA, ICRC.