A Tale of Hunger!

On February 11th, 2003, the United Nations stated in a report that more than 1 million Palestinians face hunger within weeks as international aid dries up due to the world focus on a possible war in Iraq, which in fact, was waged to the disappointment and misfortune of the entire globe. While billions were spent to cover the costs of this unjustified stupid war, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees asked for $94 million (about R800 million) to keep feeding 1.1 million needy Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, but no donations have come in, UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen said. The UN agency may have to cut off its emergency activities at the end of March if money is not quickly made available, Hansen added.
"We are scraping the bottom of every barrel and stretching every dollar we have, but without immediate donations our emergency operations are going to grind to a halt," Hansen said in a statement stating: "And yet the paradox is that our emergency funding for the year may be threatened because donors are holding back to see what is needed in Iraq. "This is no time to allow humanitarian efforts to stall," Hansen said. "Tensions are too high and the need is too great." The calls unheeded went to the thundering cluster bombs! Instead, in the early morning on 2 April Israeli military forces broke into and occupied a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East UNRWA’s girls' school in Tulkarem refugee camp in the West Bank and proceeded to use the school as a detention centre for male
residents of the camp between the ages of 15 and 40. UNRWA strongly protests this flagrant violation of United Nations privileges and immunities and the continuing denial of UNRWA's access to the school and the camp as a whole, which has been declared a closed military zone. The occupation of UNRWA's girls' school in Tulkarem is not the first such abuse of UNRWA's humanitarian installations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.An official Internet source stated: for example, in 2002 the Israeli military repeatedly used UNRWA schools as detention centres, and, in some cases used UNRWA installations as bases from which they launched military operations. In all cases, the Agency protested to the Israeli authorities, but received no reply!
UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen condemned the aggression and said: “The occupation of an UNRWA school and its use for military purposes is a violation of international legal norms, and is a discouraging step backwards in UNRWA's continuing efforts to secure humanitarian access in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I call on the Israeli authorities to leave UNRWA's school and to allow UNRWA access to its other facilities in Tulkarem camp, including a clinic, so that essential services can be restored to the refugees. Mr. Hansen said UNRWA condemns the actions targeting its educational and medical institutions, especially firing at the elementary school in Khan Younis and critically wounding one of the pupils asserting that he would send a report to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on what had happened, adding that UNRWA always sends reports to the secretary general on the Israeli breaches.
The source quoted Somaya Darweesh, 32, as saying that her daughter was sitting on her desk in classroom at one of UNRWA elementary schools in the camp, when Israeli soldiers suddenly opened gunfire directly at the school. “My daughter was not throwing stones, and didn't fire a mortar shell at the Israelis. She was just sitting at her classroom when she was shot in her head.” If so has been the case, who is to shoulder the responsibility for such inhuman practices!
 

BY
Mohammad Abdo Al-Ibrahim
Abdo88@ureach.com

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