New York (Union)
The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in the Palestinian Territories announced that the United Nations intends today to issue an appeal to raise $2.8 billion; With the aim of helping the Palestinian population in Gaza and the occupied West Bank during 2024.
Andrea Di Domenico said in a video press conference: “Certainly, ninety percent of the amount is allocated to Gaza,” explaining that the humanitarian plan for 2024 was initially estimated at four billion dollars, but it was reduced to 2.8 billion dollars due to the difficulty of delivering humanitarian aid.
For its part, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) confirmed yesterday that “there has been no tangible change” in the volume of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip.
The agency said, in a statement, that “181 aid trucks cross into Gaza daily” through land crossings with Israel and Egypt this April.
The statement indicated that these trucks “are still far below the operational capacity of both border crossings and the goal of 500 trucks per day.”
Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant told reporters that Israel plans to “flood Gaza with aid” and increase the aid to 500 trucks per day.
The Ministry of Defense body responsible for coordinating Palestinian affairs, COGAT, said that 126 trucks entered the Gaza Strip on the night of Monday-Tuesday, and that 237 trucks entered Gaza the day before yesterday.
Aid organizations and foreign governments, including the United States, have long urged Israel to reopen border crossings into northern Gaza, where the humanitarian crisis is reported to be most serious.
In addition, UNRWA announced yesterday that unexploded bombs weighing a thousand pounds (about 460 kg) were found inside schools after the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
UNRWA said that UN agencies led an “assessment mission” in Khan Yunis, after the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the besieged city last week.
According to the agency, it found “major challenges in working safely due to the presence of unexploded ordnance, including thousand-pound bombs inside schools and on roads.”
She added, in a statement, that “thousands of internally displaced people need a range of life-saving assistance, including health, water, sanitation, and food.”
The United Nations said earlier this month that it would take “millions of dollars and many years to clear the Strip of unexploded ordnance.”
“We work according to the general rule that 10 percent of munitions do not work as designed,” Charles Birch, head of the United Nations Mine Action Service, said in a statement earlier this month.
He added: “We estimate that starting to cleanse Gaza requires about 45 million dollars.”
Meanwhile, yesterday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called on Israel to stop its support for settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, which has witnessed an increase in the number of Israeli raids since the seventh of last October.
The call comes a day after Israeli settlers shot two Palestinians dead in the West Bank the day before yesterday, after Israeli forces killed a Palestinian boy during a military raid.
Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the Commission, said: “Israel must take all measures in its power to restore and ensure public order and safety as much as possible in the occupied West Bank.”
She added: “This commitment includes protecting Palestinians from settler attacks, and ending the illegal use of force against Palestinians by Israeli security forces.”
She continued: “Israeli security forces must immediately end their active participation in and support for settler attacks on Palestinians.”
Violence in the West Bank was already on the rise before Israel's attack on Gaza on October 7 in southern Israel, and violence has been escalating since then with the intensification of Israeli military raids, settler violence, and Palestinian attacks in the streets of the West Bank.
Shamdasani described the escalation of violence in the West Bank as a “deeply worrying issue.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Health says that Israeli forces or settlers killed at least 466 in the West Bank, in addition to killing more than 33,000 in the Gaza Strip.
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