The world has grown used to the idea that hunger manifests itself only in the hollow cheeks and distended stomachs of an African famine. But today in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, an insidious hunger has the Palestinian people in its grip. Hidden in the anaemic blood of children or lost in the statistics of stunted growth, a dreadful, silent malnutrition is stalking the Palestinians. The populations of Gaza and the West Bank have lived for over two years with checkpoints, closures and curfews that have ravaged their economy. Over 50 per cent are now unemployed and more than 60 per cent are living below the poverty line. The effect of this economic collapse was felt first in the erosion of family savings, followed by increased indebtedness and then the forced sale of household possessions. The Palestinian extended family and community networks have saved the territories from the absolute collapse that might have been found elsewhere in the face of such rapid decline. Every dollar is shared in the occupied territory. Anyone with an income, or a cousin working abroad, supports as many as seven other adults. Nevertheless, after two hard years of the intifada (Palestinian uprising), poverty is increasingly being felt in the stomach. In the terminology of experts, the Palestinians are suffering in the main from micronutrient deficiencies - what the World Health Organisation calls the "Hidden Hunger." It may be less dramatic than the protein-energy malnutrition that stalks African emergencies, but on the scale that it is being found among the Palestinians it is just as serious. Micronutrient deficient children fail to grow and develop normally; their cognition is damaged, often severely and irreversibly; their immune systems are compromised; in both adults and children, mental and physical capacities are impaired. In extreme cases, blindness and death result. The mental and physical development of a generation of Palestinian children hangs in the balance. An ongoing study funded by the United States Agency for International Development has found that four out of five children in Gaza and the West Bank have inadequate iron and zinc intake, deficiencies that cause anaemia and weaken the immune system. Over half the children in each territory have inadequate caloric and vitamin A intake. The stark fact is that 22 per cent of the Palestinian children are suffering from acute or chronic malnutrition for purely man- made reasons. No drought has hit Gaza and the West Bank, no crops have failed and the shops are often full of food. But the failure of the peace process and the destruction of the economy by Israel's closure policy have had the effect of a terrible natural disaster. Nursing and pregnant mothers too are suffering. On an average, they consume 15-20 per cent fewer calories per day than they did before the outbreak of strife in 2000. The consequent anaemia, low folic acid intake and lack of proteins threaten both their health and the normal development of their children. The United Nation's relief agency for Palestinian refugees,
UNRWA, is the largest aid organisation in the territories. Before
the start of the intifada, it was providing food aid to around
11,000 families in the West Bank and Gaza - families that had
lost their breadwinner or were otherwise especially at risk. For
the last two years, as part of its emergency programme, the UNRWA
food programme has grown to 2,20,000 families - or almost half
the Palestinian population of the territories. To fund this huge
food security effort, and its other emergency activities, UNRWA
has turned to the international community with a number of
emergency appeals. The latest appeal, to cover emergency
operations for the first half of next year, has just been
launched and contains a request for $32 million to provide food
for Gaza and the West Bank. It would be a sad indictment of the
world's priorities if funding for this feeding programme were not
forthcoming because of the invisible nature of the crisis. There
are as yet no skeletal faces in Gaza for the television cameras
to record, no bloated bellies to shock the world to action.
Instead, the Palestinians face hidden hunger and the quiet horror
of a generation that will be physically and mentally stunted for
the rest of their lives.
The writer is Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency.
Source: The Hindu Read More...
By: Amira Hass
Date: 27/05/2013
×
Slain Bedouin girls' mother, a victim of Israeli-Palestinian bureaucracy
Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them. In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B. The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians. Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories). In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long. The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.
By: Phoebe Greenwood
Date: 27/05/2013
×
John Kerry unveils plan to boost Palestinian economy
John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector. The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace. Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago. Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid. Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority". Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations. "Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."
By: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
Date: 27/05/2013
×
Isolation Devastates East Jerusalem Economy
Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops. “All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive. Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him. “I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.” Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay. “It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.” He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?” Illegal annexation Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community. Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect. “After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote. Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation. Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce. Extreme poverty Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower. While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line. “How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”. “Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked. “You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS. Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities. Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn. Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent. “Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found. Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population. To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones. It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services. “Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER). Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”
By the Same Author
Date: 08/01/2004
×
Commissioner-General’s address to the Second International Academic Conference
"An end to occupation, a just peace in Israel-Palestine: towards an active international network"
Sponsored by MIFTAH and FFIPP Ladies and Gentlemen
Ladies and Gentlemen
Ladies and Gentlemen
Thank you. Date: 11/12/2002
×
Hunger in Palestine
The world has grown used to the idea that hunger manifests itself only in the hollow cheeks and distended stomachs of an African famine. But today in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, an insidious hunger has the Palestinian people in its grip. Hidden in the anaemic blood of children or lost in the statistics of stunted growth, a dreadful, silent malnutrition is stalking the Palestinians. The populations of Gaza and the West Bank have lived for over two years with checkpoints, closures and curfews that have ravaged their economy. Over 50 per cent are now unemployed and more than 60 per cent are living below the poverty line. The effect of this economic collapse was felt first in the erosion of family savings, followed by increased indebtedness and then the forced sale of household possessions. The Palestinian extended family and community networks have saved the territories from the absolute collapse that might have been found elsewhere in the face of such rapid decline. Every dollar is shared in the occupied territory. Anyone with an income, or a cousin working abroad, supports as many as seven other adults. Nevertheless, after two hard years of the intifada (Palestinian uprising), poverty is increasingly being felt in the stomach. In the terminology of experts, the Palestinians are suffering in the main from micronutrient deficiencies - what the World Health Organisation calls the "Hidden Hunger." It may be less dramatic than the protein-energy malnutrition that stalks African emergencies, but on the scale that it is being found among the Palestinians it is just as serious. Micronutrient deficient children fail to grow and develop normally; their cognition is damaged, often severely and irreversibly; their immune systems are compromised; in both adults and children, mental and physical capacities are impaired. In extreme cases, blindness and death result. The mental and physical development of a generation of Palestinian children hangs in the balance. An ongoing study funded by the United States Agency for International Development has found that four out of five children in Gaza and the West Bank have inadequate iron and zinc intake, deficiencies that cause anaemia and weaken the immune system. Over half the children in each territory have inadequate caloric and vitamin A intake. The stark fact is that 22 per cent of the Palestinian children are suffering from acute or chronic malnutrition for purely man- made reasons. No drought has hit Gaza and the West Bank, no crops have failed and the shops are often full of food. But the failure of the peace process and the destruction of the economy by Israel's closure policy have had the effect of a terrible natural disaster. Nursing and pregnant mothers too are suffering. On an average, they consume 15-20 per cent fewer calories per day than they did before the outbreak of strife in 2000. The consequent anaemia, low folic acid intake and lack of proteins threaten both their health and the normal development of their children. The United Nation's relief agency for Palestinian refugees,
UNRWA, is the largest aid organisation in the territories. Before
the start of the intifada, it was providing food aid to around
11,000 families in the West Bank and Gaza - families that had
lost their breadwinner or were otherwise especially at risk. For
the last two years, as part of its emergency programme, the UNRWA
food programme has grown to 2,20,000 families - or almost half
the Palestinian population of the territories. To fund this huge
food security effort, and its other emergency activities, UNRWA
has turned to the international community with a number of
emergency appeals. The latest appeal, to cover emergency
operations for the first half of next year, has just been
launched and contains a request for $32 million to provide food
for Gaza and the West Bank. It would be a sad indictment of the
world's priorities if funding for this feeding programme were not
forthcoming because of the invisible nature of the crisis. There
are as yet no skeletal faces in Gaza for the television cameras
to record, no bloated bellies to shock the world to action.
Instead, the Palestinians face hidden hunger and the quiet horror
of a generation that will be physically and mentally stunted for
the rest of their lives.
The writer is Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency.
Source: The Hindu Date: 14/10/2002
×
Frightened and Deprived
Palestinian children GAZA Imagine the political fallout if every schoolchild in London had missed a month's schooling last year because teachers could not get to classes. Think of the parental anguish and outrage if the Paris school system saw its pass rates in French language exams fall from 71 to 38 percent in a year. Now picture your own child traumatized by fear because every day her journey to school meant a trip past tanks, checkpoints and soldiers. This nightmare is the reality facing Palestinian parents, teachers and around a million pupils - the school population of a major European capital - in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after two years of the intifada. The main causes of this educational crisis are the curfews and closures imposed by the Israeli authorities in their attempt to deal with Palestinian militants. These have crippled the education program of the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations. The UN Relief and Works Agency runs 264 schools for almost 250,000 pupils in the West Bank and Gaza. Last year it lost an average of 29 working school days per school because staff or pupils could not get to their classes. Last year, in total, 72,000 teacher workdays were lost. Exams could be given only when curfews were lifted, and summer schools, designed to create a secure environment for children, were barely attended. Things this year seem, if anything, to be getting worse. Since school started on Aug. 31, 36 UN schools in the West Bank have been closed for from two to 15 days. Access to schools in Nablus has been so bad that some teachers have been hired based only on telephone interviews and will meet their supervisors only when they can get to work. But closed schools are only one part of the story. Military operations, largely by Israel but in some instances by Palestinian factions, have violated the sanctity of schools across the occupied territory. Scores of schools have been used as detention centers, almost 200 have been damaged by gunfire and more than 170 students have been arrested. According to an Amnesty International report, 250 Palestinian schoolchildren have been killed since September 2000. It is not uncommon for children to be searched and abused by Israeli troops on their way to and from school or to be subject to tear gas and warning shots near checkpoints. This terrifying environment has had a devastating effect on Palestinian children. Exam pass rates in Arabic and math have collapsed, while dropout rates are starting to rise for the first time in a decade. Pupil assaults on teachers, unthinkable in the past, have begun to make an appearance. Teachers are increasingly reporting signs of psychological trauma. UNRWA has employed counselors to encourage children to share their experiences and has boosted its remedial and summer school programs, as well as extended its school year, in an effort to mitigate the worst effects of the conflict. But it is becoming ever more apparent that Palestinian children will be paying twice over for the crisis in the West Bank and Gaza. Already they have paid with the loss of their security, innocence and education. But they will also pay with their futures. They will pay with the loss of opportunity, development and hope that a sound education brings. This is a tragedy for the Palestinian people, who, with so many disadvantages to cope with, have traditionally put great stock in education. Palestinian literacy rates were among the highest in the region. Palestinian girls were the first in the Arab world to achieve educational parity with boys. All of which meant that Palestinian-educated engineers helped build the Gulf region and Palestinian-educated doctors have benefited communities from California to Cairo. It is imperative that the Israeli authorities begin to lift their curfews and closures on population centers now, before more damage is done to children. Israel has security concerns - and Amnesty reports that 72 of its children have been killed since the start of the intifada - but I cannot believe that those security concerns are being served by depriving a generation of Palestinians of their right to a future. The writer is commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune. Contact us
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