UNITED NATIONS, 3 March 2004 — The United Nation’s Palestinian refugee agency on Thursday halted emergency food aid to 600,000 people in the Gaza Strip, saying it was out of supplies due to new Israeli security restrictions.
Israel has barred shipments of empty food containers out of Gaza after a deadly suicide bombing last month in which the attackers may have been smuggled inside one of the containers.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency said that it had to suspend food shipments in response in order to avoid an expensive bottleneck. “If the new restrictions in Gaza continue, I fear we could see real hunger emerge for the first time in two generations,” said UNRWA director Peter Hansen in a statement released at UN headquarters in New York.
“Israel’s legitimate and serious security concerns will not be served by hindering the emergency relief work of the United Nations,” he said. UNRWA said it normally delivers 250 tons of food to Gaza daily, but that now the supplies have run out.
“Stocks of rice, flour, cooking oil and other essential foodstuffs that UNRWA provides to refugees reduced to poverty, or otherwise affected by a humanitarian crisis now in its 42nd month, have been fully depleted,” it said.
The suspension does not affect deliveries in the West Bank, where about the same number of refugees depend on aid from the UN agency. The suspension “will further distress communities already struggling to cope with unrelieved economic hardship and malnutrition,” Hansen said.
“If the new restrictions in Gaza continue, I fear we could see real hunger emerge for the first time in two generations. Israel’s legitimate, and serious, security concerns will not be served by hindering the emergency relief work of the United Nations,” Hansen said.
