GENEVA, November 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - More than a fifth of Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank are suffering from acute or chronic malnutrition, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, warned here on Monday, November 18.

Launching a 35-million-dollar appeal to fund what he said was the region’s biggest food aid program, Peter Hansen said the plan was to distribute food parcels to 1.3 million people over the first six months of 2003.

“They are suffering for purely man-made reasons. No drought has hit Gaza and the West Bank, no crops have failed and the shops are often full of food,” the UNRWA commissioner-general said.

“But the failure of the peace process and the destruction of the Palestinian economy by Israel’s closures policy have had the effect of a terrible natural disaster,” he added.

The food aid figure is included in UNRWA’s 2003 appeal to donors for about 200 million dollars, which will officially be launched on Tuesday in Bern as part of the U.N.’s overall appeal for next year’s humanitarian activities.

The figure compares to this year’s appeal of 172 million dollars which has only received 60 percent funding.

The 1.3 million Palestinians targeted in the food aid program translates into 222,000 families, Hansen told reporters.

Before the start of the current intifada in September 2000, UNRWA fed just 11,000 families in the occupied territories.

Hansen also said that although it was unsurprising that Israel should take “harsh” measures to protect its people amid their high feeling of insecurity and fear, he did not believe many of the steps would prove effective in promoting security.

“We are not there to advise the Israeli government on its security policies ... but if we were to be asked about advice, I think we would find that many of the measures that are taken do not, in the medium and long term, increase the security, which the Israeli people have the right to expect in their lives,” he told reporters.

“But it does create a number of people who have seen their lives ruined, who have seen their families killed or maimed, and who have experienced a humiliation that one really must see and experience to grasp it,” he added.

The UNRWA chief said the overall effect would lead to “more hatred, less tolerance on both sides, and a worsening of the dynamics of the conflict.”