GAZA
CITY, August 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - While the UN
special coordinator for the Middle East Terje Roed-Larsen warned
Thursday, August 29, 2002, that the Palestinian population was facing
an imminent "human catastrophe", a second Palestinian child
was killed and 11 other people wounded during an Israeli army raid
into the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on Thursday evening.
The
second boy, who was shot in the head, was identified as 14-year-old
Abdel Hadi Hamayda. Two of the wounded were in a critical condition,
according to a new toll from Palestinian medical sources, reported
Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Earlier
Thursday, the medical sources said one unidentified boy was killed and
nine other people were wounded in the raid.
Witnesses
in the battle-scarred town on the border with Egypt said that a
bulldozer and four tanks moved some 200 meters (yards) into autonomous
Palestinian territory, destroying four shops and one house.
A
bunch of children threw stones at Israeli armored vehicles, which also
entered the town.
Meanwhile,
the UN special coordinator for the Middle East Roed-Larsen warned that
the Palestinian population was facing an imminent "human
catastrophe," and urged Israel to reconsider its security
policies.
Roed-Larsen
revealed preliminary figures on the soaring levels of unemployment,
income losses and poverty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, ahead of a
full report due to be released in September, AFP reported.
Those
estimates show that overall unemployment in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip rocketed from 36 percent to "approximately 50 percent"
during the second quarter of 2002.
The
UN envoy pointed out that on days when crippling curfews locked
between 600,000 and 900,000 Palestinians in their homes, the
unemployment rate rose to 63.3 percent in the West Bank, East
Jerusalem excluded.
The
figures he presented also revealed that total Palestinian income
losses stood at 7.6 million dollars per day, bringing the tally to 3.3
billion dollars since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising on
September 28, 2000.
The
UN coordinator also announced that his "estimates put poverty -
based on two dollars or less consumption per day - at 70 percent in
Gaza and 55 percent in the West Bank."
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Israeli soldiers hardly allow Palestinians out of their
homes
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"I
am deeply disturbed by the figures. But I am not surprised, given the
iron grip that Israel has applied on the West Bank," he told
reporters, more than two months after the Israeli army reoccupied most
of the West Bank.
"Aid
cannot fill the gap, but without it the economy would collapse.
Against this backdrop, and before the eyes of the world, the
Palestinian population is scrambling to survive," he said.
"In
light of the hardships facing Palestinian civilians, within the next
few days I will meet with senior Israeli officials and urge them to
re-examine the application of their security measures,"
Roed-Larsen said.
"There
is a gray area where the legitimate defense of Israeli civilians has
the de facto consequence of collective punishment for Palestinian
civilians," he added.
"Security
for Israelis will not be achieved by perpetuating economic and social
insecurity for Palestinians," he said.
When
asked about the security plan for a phased Israeli withdrawal from
recently reoccupied areas in exchange for a Palestinian crackdown on
resistance activists, he said he welcomed any initiative bringing the
two sides to the same table.
However,
he also hinted that the fledgling security pact would be insufficient
