April 8, 2004
"Open Gates to Allow Food into Gaza"
from Gila Svirsky
Dear Friends,
Two of us, both peace and human rights activists in Israel, have just prepared an online petition called:
"Open Gates to Allow Food into Gaza"
(For your convenience, we have pasted a copy below.)
This petition refers to the recent suspension of aid into Gaza by the UNRWA as a result of Israeli actions that prevent the UN food trucks from entering.
Please read the petition below. If you'd like to sign, click on: <http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Aid2Gaza>
Yours,
Oren Medicks & Gila Svirsky
The Petition:
To: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
We are appalled to hear that UNRWA has been forced to suspend its food aid in Gaza as a result of new Israeli regulations. The severe economic hardship of the children and adults in Gaza is well documented by US AID and other sources. Preventing the access of humanitarian aid will exacerbate already existing conditions of starvation and malnourishment.
Therefore, we individuals and organizations concerned with peace, justice, and human rights -- Israeli and international -- call upon the Israeli government to ensure that UNWRA and other relief agencies are able to continue their work or, alternatively, that Israel replace this aid with its own, and thereby ensure the well-being of the population, as mandated by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
We demand that the Israeli government address this matter with the utmost urgency, as human lives are at stake. We call upon the governments of other countries to lend weight to this humanitarian appeal, which is intended to secure Israel's compliance with its obligations under law as well as basic humanitarian values.
Sincerely,
If you'd like to sign this petition, click on:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Aid2Gaza/
Background information:
UNRWA Press Release 1 April 2004
UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near
East-Headquarters Gaza
website: www.unrwa.org
Press Release No. HQ/G/06/2004
1 April, 2004
UNRWA suspends emergency food aid in Gaza
Gaza - The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees
(UNRWA) today stopped 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 Palestinian territory, following restrictions
introduced by Israeli authorities at the sole commercial crossing through
which the Agency is able to bring in humanitarian assistance. Stocks of
rice, flour, cooking oil and other essential foodstuffs that UNRWA provides
to refugees reduced to poverty, or otherwise affected by a humanitarian crisis now in its 42nd month, have been fully depleted.
Efforts to persuade the Israeli authorities to lift the restriction on the transport of UNRWA's empty food containers out of Gaza have so far failed,forcing the Agency to suspend the delivery into Gaza of 11,000 tons of food from Ashdod Port to avoid a bottleneck which would result in prohibitive costs. Under normal circumstances, UNRWA delivers some 250 tons of food aid per day in Gaza alone as part of a wider programme of emergency assistance to refugees, initiated shortly after the outbreak of strife in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in September 2000. Since then, the Gaza Strip has been locked into a deep socio-economic crisis resulting from the prolonged closure of its border with Israel, the destruction of thousands of homes as well as of agricultural and local industrial assets. Almost two out of three households in Gaza live below the poverty line, and more than half its workforce is unemployed.
UNRWA is not alone in facing chronic obstacles to the flow of humanitarian
assistance. These have been experienced by all UN agencies operating in the
West Bank and Gaza, whose Agency heads in a joint statement on 26 March
called, without success, on the Government of Israel to loosen the restrictions currently in force in Gaza.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen said: "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. 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."
If you'd like to sign our petition, click on:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Aid2Gaza/