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U.N. Says Israeli Offensive on West Bank Cost $300m
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The UNDP, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, the U.S. and the World Bank carried out the appraisal of Israeli destruction of the West Bank.
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UNITED
NATIONS, May 7 (News Agencies) - Israel's military offensive in the
West Bank caused up to $300m (£204m) worth of damage to Palestinian
property and reconstruction will take over a year, a United Nations
report said.
The
assessment was carried out by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) in
co-operation with the governments of Italy, Japan, the Netherlands,
Norway and the United States, and the World Bank, BBC’s online news
service reported.
The
damage appraisal is the first step in drawing up a plan for the
reconstruction of the West Bank, following Israel’s deadly
offensives.
It
will be distributed to international donors who will then be asked to
allocate funds for specific projects.
The
U.N. says that donors have in principle agreed to disburse around
$1.2bn over the coming year, but the extent to which this money can in
practice be distributed will depend on whether or not the military
crackdown continues.
According
to this latest assessment, Nablus was the hardest-hit of all the
Palestinian towns, suffering an estimated $110m worth of damage during
the Israeli army's 18-day occupation, said BBC.
Throughout
the West Bank, many Palestinian Government buildings were destroyed by
heavy shelling.
The
UNDP says it has already provided $1.9m in emergency aid over the past
three weeks.
However,
the head of the World Bank's program in Gaza says that though donor
countries are committed to providing aid, they are also concerned that
they could end up financing a program of reconstruction only to see
the Palestinian infrastructure reduced to rubble again by more
fighting.
Israel's
military offensives in the Palestinian territories have disrupted –
among other things -- the region's computer networks.
Many
Palestinian websites run from the region have been knocked offline for
weeks, including most government sites, said BBC.
Since
the Israeli withdrawal from certain areas, Palestinian technicians
have been working to restore the telecoms network.
For
their part, computer security experts say Israeli websites have been
the target of hackers, although most government websites have remained
readily available.
The
disruption to Palestinian websites started at the beginning of April,
when Israeli troops hit the Nablus headquarters of the Palestinian
telecoms network, PalTel.
Set
up in 1996 at a cost of $65m cost, PalTel provided the communication
infrastructure for the occupied territories.
As
a result, many sites were set up to temporarily redirect visitors to a
holding page at the U.S.-based ElectronicIntifada site.
"During
the time of incursion, most of the servers were affected," said
Dr. Sabri Saidam, a technology consultant who worked on the
Palestinian Authority's web projects.
"The
rampage targeted Palestinian institutions, as well as internet service
providers and private groups," he told the BBC program, Go
Digital.
In
some cases, computer equipment was destroyed, offices badly damaged
and electricity supplies cut.
An
eyewitness who visited the offices of the Health, Development,
Information and Policy Institute in Ramallah described a scene of
devastation there.
"All
the computers in the office have been thrown into one big pile at the
entrance; desks and chairs are broken and scattered on top of each
other," wrote Patricia Smith in a report for a Palestinian NGO.
"The
computer hard-drives have been taken out and the server is gone,
together with all the printers and fax machines."
Rebuilding
the computer network is going to take time and money. Many of the
fledgling websites of the Palestinian Authority had been funded by
international donors.
The
E.U., U.S. and even China had helped to pay for the equipment and
facilities destroyed in the recent Israeli offensives.
"There
were hopes of building on the peace that existed in the last seven
years," said Dr. Saidam.
"Sadly,
all this seems to have collapsed. All these dreams seem to have been
dashed.
"It
has been extremely painful to see everything you have worked on being
demolished before your own eyes," he told BBC.
For
ctivists, the damage has been done to limit the ability of
Palestinians to use the net to spread information about events on the
ground.
"These
days much of the Palestinian advocacy takes place on the internet.
This relies not so much on websites but on e-mail from the
ground," said Nigel Parry of the U.S.-based ElectronicIntifada.
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