Growing Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza

Photo: REUTERS/Desmond Boylan/alertnet.org

Food and medical supplies in the Palestinian territories are growing increasingly scarce, and vulnerable families in the West Bank and Gaza are falling deeper into crushing poverty. Mercy Corps is launching an emergency appeal for donations to aid especially vulnerable people in one of the world's most volatile crisis zones.

Reports from the United Nations paint a bleak picture of conditions in the Palestinian territories - particularly in Gaza, home to about 1.3 million people. A reduction in international aid has restricted the flow of people, money and goods in and out of Gaza.

In response to this latest crisis, Mercy Corps, through its local partner the Jabalia Association for Rehabilitation, is helping more than 100 people with disabilities purchase needed medical and personal-care items.

Additional funds from this emergency appeal will be directed to the most vulnerable populations in Gaza and the West Bank, ensuring, for example, that widows and families with small children have sufficient cooking fuel, hygiene products and other essentials. Mercy Corps will work with local organizations to identify potential beneficiaries and meet their most pressing needs.

Humanitarian aid is immediately needed to stave off severe economic hardship for people with disabilities, widows and poor families with young children. These individuals and families are struggling to cope with spiraling prices and shortages of essential goods.

One result of these shortages is that prices for food, medicine and other staples have risen sharply. Wheat flour, chickpeas and sugar cost 25-50 percent more today than they did last September, according to the UN World Food Programme.

Another effect is that many of Gaza's 65,000 farming families can't find seeds and fertilizers at local markets, or get their fruit and vegetables to market. Daily trucks leaving Gaza with exports headed to Israel and beyond, for example, declined from 22 to five over the past month, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. As a result, farmers' produce is rotting in the back of trucks that never make it to market.

"In the last few weeks we've seen more and more indications of suffering," says Isdud Al Najjar, Mercy Corps program manager in Gaza. "People have very little money to live on, even less than before, while prices are going up and availability is going down."

Al Najjar says most of the small shops in Gaza are selling their goods on credit, and that the Palestinian Ministry of Health recently released an emergency appeal for medicines and hospital supplies for patients.

Landrum Bolling, Mercy Corps director at large and a distinguished envoy for Middle East peace, visited the region a month ago and heard stories of children going hungry. "It's an impoverished area with limited economic opportunities already," says Bolling. In light of recent international aid cuts to the government, he says, "there is a very great need for non-governmental organizations like Mercy Corps to help."

Mercy Corps' history of supporting development programs in the West Bank and Gaza dates to the 1980s.

In recent years, the agency has:

• Rehabilitated schools and classrooms for more than 3,300 students, and helped surrounding communities establish parent-teacher associations;
• Joined with a respected youth organization to teach entrepreneurial skills to young women;
• Held a sports festival that brought together disabled and non-disabled youth;
• Convened workshops that allowed people with disabilities to share experiences, build alliances and learn about a rights-based approach to change; and
• Launched a program to connect high school students in Washington, D.C., with a youth club in Gaza via the Internet, enabling them to think and learn beyond the boundaries of their own societies while enhancing cultural exchange and intercultural understanding.

The crisis in the West Bank and Gaza is worsening by the day. Please consider a generous donation to help children and families.