GENEVA, 31 March 2004 — The United Nations said yesterday it will have to halt food deliveries to the Gaza Strip this week because of restrictions imposed by Israel on the movement of staff and supplies.

The head of the UN’s aid agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Peter Hansen, said it was unable to cope with the impact of increased Israeli security at crossing points.

“We will have as of Thursday to discontinue food distributions as we can no longer cope with the inability to take containers out of Gaza,” Hansen told journalists in Geneva. He said the blockage on the movement of used containers was adding “intolerable costs to a program which is already stung by underfunding”.

The World Food Program estimates that 150,000 people in Gaza are dependent on food aid, while UNRWA provides assistance to more than 90,000 people in Gaza and the West Bank, both territories occupied by Israel. About 11,000 tons of food are running into a bottleneck outside Gaza, he said.

Hansen also protested about Israeli measures that were forcing staff to cross in exposed areas, prompting his agency to prohibit some aid workers from entering the Gaza Strip because of “unacceptable risk and danger”. He said there had been no response following repeated complaints to Israeli authorities this month.

Meanwhile, amid the rubble of homes destroyed by Israeli soldiers, 16-year-old Nada Al-Agha and her family struggle to stay put in the Palestinian refugee camp of Rafah. Both her parents have been wounded by Israeli gunfire and bullet holes mark the walls of rooms within the sights of an Israeli border watchtower, but the family will not leave.

“We expect they could destroy the house,” said Nada in the battered camp situated on Gaza’s border with Egypt. Her family inhabits the edge of a devastated no man’s land that Israel has carved out of Rafah where it touches the border in what it calls a continuing campaign to root out Palestinian gunmen and find tunnels they use to smuggle in arms from Egypt.

With peacemaking at a standstill, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans to evacuate Jewish settlers from Gaza to reduce exposure to militant violence. His “Disengagement Plan” is of little solace to Palestinians on Rafah’s front line. “This is what they (the Israelis) are talking about, but who knows?” said Abla, a Rafah resident, pointing to bullet holes in her washing machine.

UNRWA says Israeli forces have demolished 1,400 homes throughout Gaza, and more than 900 in Rafah alone, since a Palestinian uprising began in 2000. Nearly 15,000 people have been made homeless, the refugee body says. Palestinians say Israeli tanks and bulldozers often enter Rafah at night under cover of gunfire, sending residents fleeing for safety.