Manar al-Shinbari, 15, who lost both legs in Israeli shelling at a UN-run school where she was taking refuge during the 50-day war last summer, uses her walker at the ruins of her house in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday. Manar’s mother and three of her brothers were killed.
AFP/Gaza City
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo called for more international help for Gaza as he met yesterday with families who lost their homes in last summer’s war with Israel.
“The international community must act rapidly to rebuild Gaza,” he told reporters at a UN-run school in Gaza City, one of a number of places hosting some 17,000 Gazans who were displaced during the war.
“The inhabitants of Gaza are living through a real tragedy,” he said, referring to the 50-day war which left nearly 2,200 Palestinians dead, more than 10,000 wounded and over 120,000 homes damaged or destroyed.
Although the fighting stopped more than four months ago, reconstruction has yet to begin in earnest for a variety of reasons, including delays caused by the conditions of Israel’s blockade on the territory.
Standing next to him, Pierre Krahenbuhl, the commissioner general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), warned that delaying the reconstruction “would have negative consequences”.
Last week, a major winter storm battered the region, leaving three infants dead and thousands of families suffering from the gale force winds, torrential rain and freezing conditions.
“The winter storms have heightened the vulnerability of a population that is struggling to recover from the 50-day conflict. Reconstruction is slow and discontent is growing as funds and support fail to materialise,” an Unrwa statement said.
“To date, some $135mn has been received by Unrwa, leaving a funding gap of $585mn for shelter assistance. Unrwa is warning that unless the current situation changes, funds for cash assistance will run out in February.”
So far, Unrwa has provided $70mn in aid to more than 40,000 families for repairing their damaged homes, Krahenbuhl said.
On Monday, Garcia-Margallo met his Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Malki in the West Bank city of Ramallah, as well as Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, who heads a national consensus government which was formed in June in the wake of a reconciliation agreement between Hamas and its rivals in Fatah, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas.
In mid-November, the Spanish parliament voted in favour of a motion urging Madrid’s conservative government to recognise Palestine in co-ordination with any similar move by the European Union, drawing an angry response from Israel.
On January 1, Spain began a two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council where the Palestinians tried and failed to have a resolution passed late last year calling for setting an end date for the Israeli occupation.
lHundreds of Hamas employees began a sit-in in front of the headquarters of the Palestinian unity government in Gaza yesterday, vowing to stay until their salaries were paid.
“Our sit-in is peaceful and we do not want to destroy public property, but we will stay here until our members are recognised and their salaries paid,” union spokesman Khalil al-Zayan said.
Zayan noted that staff recruited by the former Hamas administration had not received any wages for seven months.
“They can no longer support their families, this is unacceptable,” he said of the crisis looming over the reconciliation agreement.
Hamas been demanding the new government pay the salaries of the 50,000 civil servants it recruited after its takeover of Gaza in 2007, who took the jobs of 70,000 Fatah employees.
Partial payments of $1,200 each were made to 24,000 Hamas civil servants in late October. But the other 26,000, who work in security functions, have received nothing.
“We’ve had enough of the false promises. Either the government resigns or it takes all of Gaza’s responsibilities, like in the West Bank,” Zayan said.
At the end of December, hundreds of Hamas civil servants blocked the entrance to the unity government’s headquarters during a visit to Gaza by West Bank-based ministers.
