Palestinians chant anti-freeze slogans during the protest at the Nusseirat refugee camp

GAZA CITY, May 1 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated Friday, April 30, in the central Gaza Strip against the Palestinian Authority’s adamancy to keep an eight-month freeze on charities, the lifeline of destitute and orphaned Palestinians.

"Since monthly aid from Islamic charities stopped, nobody has knocked on our door to hand out food to my children," Um Said, a 35-year-old mother of six whose husband passed away several years go, was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

She blasted as "cruel" the authority's decision not to uphold a March 21 high court's decision to unfreeze the charities assets.

More than 2,000 Palestinians had gathered in the impoverished Nusseirat refugee camp after Friday noon prayer, carrying banners reading, "Does the national interest lie in starving the poor and the destitute?" , "No to the policy of starving the Palestinian people to make them bend."

The PA’s move against charities came hard on the heels of a White House decision to freeze and block the assets of six Hamas leaders and five pro-Palestinians charities in Europe and Lebanon.

Palestinian resistance groups used to run a network of charitable organizations which provides education and medical services to tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Abu Ali Al-Salehi, in his 60s, said he had not been able to provide for his 12 children since last August.

"I wish they would take pity on us. It's as if the Israeli crimes and assassinations were not enough," he moaned.

‘Social Explosion’

The head the Islamic cultural and educational association, Sheikh Youssef Farhat, whose organization saw its funds frozen, warned against "a social explosion".

"We call on the Palestinian people to protest against this injustice and ask for the implementation of the court's decision," he told AFP as he marched with some 3,000 other people in the nearby refugee camp of Deir al-Balah.

Farhat urged families concerned by the relief suspension to organize sit-ins in front of Palestinian banks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Sunday and ask for their due.

He said that organizations whose funds were frozen used to help "20,000 poor families, sick people and orphans by providing monthly financial assistance. They also periodically helped 200 additional families".

The solidarity committee with charitable organizations, which called for the demonstrations, denounced "the violation of the law and the continuing policy of starving, crushing and punishing the Palestinian people by Palestinian hands".

Medical centers affiliated to the organizations used to provide services for a nominal fee or free of charge to some 50,000 people.

Two other demonstrations also took place in the refugee camps of Maghazi and Breij, residents told AFP.

The freeze also targeted five non-governmental organizations that Washington charged of providing "financial support to Hamas".

Two of the organizations, the France-based the Committee for Palestinian Charity and Aid (CBSP) and the Association de Secours Palestiniens (ASP) in Switzerland, have been working in tandem with more than a dozen relief organizations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon.

The CBSP dared U.S. President George W. Bush to prove his allegations that it gave cash to any resistance factions, insisting the freeze meant starving thousands of orphans in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Thousands of Palestinian orphans and destitute families took to the streets of Palestinian cities last August to protest the unjust move.