April 20, 2024 13:33 (IST)
Follow us:
Gaza: UN calls for end to Israeli blockade
New York, Apr 18 (IBNS): On his first official visit to the Gaza Strip, the new head of the United Nations agency assisting Palestinian refugees across the Middle East underscored the need to lift the seven-year Israeli blockade and end the "illegal collective punishment" unleashed on the population there.
“Nothing prepares you for Gaza; no amount of UN humanitarian reports, no amount of newspaper articles, no amount of human rights investigations. None of these can adequately convey what the people here are going through; the profound sense of isolation and the sheer scale and depth of the suffering,” said Pierre Krähenbühl.
The Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) vowed to advocate strenuously to end the blockade Israel has imposed since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007.
Speaking on Wednesday at an UNRWA clinic in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, Krähenbühl said the aim of the visit was to express solidarity and support for Palestinian refugees, and to find out the best ways develop UNRWA services to better to help them.
He said that his first impression during his visit to Gaza was of the fence: “The first thing of course you see of Gaza is the fence around it; a reminder of the blockade, which as my predecessor pointed out recently, has lasted as long as some of the most infamous sieges of contemporary history, such as the siege of Leningrad. It amounts to an illegal collective punishment and I join UN officials and world leaders in calling for it to end.”
Krähenbühl added that the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza were apparent to everyone, and noted that the Agency currently provides aid to some 800,000 refugees in the Strip, as compared to some 80,000 in 2000.
UNRWA currently provides services such as education, health and micro-financing to some 5 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants in the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
(A makeshift primary school for students at the UNMISS displaced persons camp in Bor, Jonglei state, South Sudan. Photo: UNMISS/Mihad Abdalla)
Support Our Journalism
We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism
IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.
Support objective journalism for a small contribution.
Latest Headlines
Washington sanctions entities for allegedly supplying ballistic missile items to Pakistan Sat, Apr 20 2024
Retaliatory spiral in Middle East must end, says UN chief António Guterres after reported strikes on Iran Sat, Apr 20 2024
Iran claims to have shot down several drones launched by Israel in retaliation attack Sat, Apr 20 2024
Canada: Police investigation link a vehicle used in armed carjackings in Greater Toronto Area Fri, Apr 19 2024
Cambodian authorities extradite 130 Chinese nationals over cybercrime, online fraud Fri, Apr 19 2024
Amid political unrest, Pakistan Army reaffirms its dominant role Fri, Apr 19 2024
US vetoes Palestine’s request UN's full membership Fri, Apr 19 2024