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77 Million Dollars Needed to Help Palestine Refugees: U.N. Agency
The United Nations launched an appeal to donors for 77 million U.S. dollars needed to bring food, medical supplies and other assistance to people in the West Bank and Gaza, a U.N. agency said Friday.
U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the key U.N. agency providing humanitarian relief to Palestine refugees, said in a just-released statement issued here that their aim is to provide 217,000 refugee families with basic food aid, and to rebuild some 200 refugee shelters that have been destroyed by shelling or bulldozing by Israeli security forces.
"The severe decline in the Palestinian economy and the impact of the violence on the health and welfare of refugees would not be reversed quickly even if the violence ended immediately and Israel halted its policy of closures and other punitive measures in Gaza and the West Bank," said Peter Hansen, UNRWA commissioner-general, in the statement.
The more than eight-month-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict, triggered by Israeli violation of an Islamic holy shrine in East Jerusalem last September, has so far left some 600 people dead, most of them Palestinians.
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