The United Nations has appealed for a near doubling of emergency aid to the Palestinian territories to alleviate a crippling economic crisis after the freezing of foreign funds to the Hamas government and Israeli sanctions against the Palestinians. It has revised the amount it wants foreign governments to donate this year from $215-million to $385-million to prevent the collapse of services such as health and education, and to provide food and medicines.
The appeal document said the UN had taken the unprecedented step of asking for more money because of the ”extremely bleak” humanitarian outlook for the occupied territories that is ”predicted to worsen dramatically in coming months”.
”We’re seeing people cut back on food and basic expenses,” said David Shearer, head of the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs. ”The situation in Gaza is the most acute.”
An existing economic crisis has been compounded by the freezing of about $1-billion in foreign aid from the European Union and United States after the Hamas election victory in January, and Israel withholding taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
The UN said PA revenues had dropped by 75% from last year. It estimates that the economy will contract by 27% this year.
The most immediate impact has been that the authority has not paid its 152 000 workers for three months.
Those salaries support about one-million people, or one in four of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories. The UN estimates that only 28% of people in Gaza are now in employment for which they are actually paid.
About 100 000 Gazans have registered with the UN seeking short-term jobs but officials say they do not have the funds to help more than a few thousand.
The Palestinian Finance Minister, Omar Abdel Razek, said on Wednesday his government had raised money to pay 40 000 of the lowest paid workers one month’s back salary. But the UN said that would only make a marginal difference to the crisis.
Shearer said the economy had also been driven down in recent months by more Israeli curbs on movement within the West Bank and in and out of Gaza.
Palestinians are often unable to move between different parts of the West Bank because of army checkpoints, greatly affecting their ability to work and trade. Israel has blocked workers entering from Gaza for three months and brought exports from there to a virtual halt.
The biggest foreign donors have agreed to create a fund to bypass Hamas and pay PA workers such as doctors and teachers directly. But the UN’s special envoy for the Middle East, Alvaro de Soto, on Wednesday warned that the measure could create further problems if about 70 000 members of the security forces were not also paid. ”You can imagine the frustrations, added to a situation that is already fraught, if you pay some and not others,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited Â