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UNRWA: Israel's Blockade Violates International Law
COPENHAGEN, June 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The head of a U.N. relief agency accused the Israeli army of violating international law by hampering the work of the United Nations and the Red Cross in the Palestinian occupied territories.
The head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Peter Hansen said, "The refusal of the Israelis to allow free passage to U.N. vehicles transporting first aid materials to Gaza is leading to a near shortage of medicines, vaccines and other emergency products."
Hanson described the blockade as a violation of international law, the AFP news agency reported Thursday.
"According to the 4th Geneva Convention and the Conventions of Vienna, our humanitarian staff, our medicines and our other supplies have the right to travel, and this right is not respected by Israel," the Danish official told reporters Wednesday during a visit to Denmark.
The Israeli army has slapped a series of blockades on the Palestinian occupied territories since the beginning of the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, the last of which was a curfew and blockade on the Palestinian town of Dir Estia, southwest of Nablus, in the West Bank Wednesday, a town of 3,500 inhabitants and under joint Israeli-Palestinian security control.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are dependent on UNRWA and Red Cross aid due to the crippling economic blockade imposed on the occupied territories by the Israeli army, news agencies reported.
Although Hanson said Israeli troops had not directly prevented UNRWA trucks carrying aid from entering the Palestinian occupied territories, he said their check posts had forced convoys to be unloaded for time-consuming inspections.
"In every country in the world where humanitarian operations are taking place, there is a confidence in the neutrality of the U.N.... but for the UNRWA, this has never been the case," he complained.
Earlier, UNRWA had made an urgent appeal for $77 million to handle the worsening situation of refugees in the Palestinian occupied territories.
In its third appeal since November of 2000, it called for a response "to the urgent needs of the some 1.5 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, hit by unemployment and the effects of the Israeli blockade," deputy-director Karen Koning Abu Zayed told a news conference in Jerusalem June 22nd.
"The desperate condition of Palestine refugees in Gaza and the West Bank after nine months of conflict has compelled the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees to appeal to the international community," Abu Zayed said.
The money is needed "to buy and distribute urgently needed food aid, medical supplies and to provide emergency work program," she added.
Abu Zayed said the emergency funds should deliver food aid to 217,000 refugee families, while offering 700,000 "job-opportunity days" to support the unemployed and fund the reconstruction of 200 homes destroyed by Israeli bombardments.
UNRWA also plans help for some 200,000 students who have missed classes resulting from frequent school closures since the start of the uprising.
More than five million dollars in estimated economic losses have been due to the Israeli blockade, the Palestinian embassy in Amman said in a report.
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