Commenting on UPA's response, RI's Program Officer Ben Granby said, "UPA's flexibility and ability to rapidly respond to changing needs helped us immediately address critical needs from the first days of the Gaza crisis."The first phase of the "Emergency Parcel Project" aims to provide 1,000 families (approximately 6,000 people) displaced by the fighting with sugar, salt, canned beef, canned tuna, white rice, vegetable oil, and canned beans for the next month. Additionally, UPA is working on shipping an in-kind donation of sleeping bags, blankets, and hygiene kits to assist the more than 20,000 homeless families whose homes were destroyed by the bombing.
Commenting on UPA's response, RI's Program Officer Ben Granby said, "UPA's flexibility and ability to rapidly respond to changing needs helped us immediately address critical needs from the first days of the Gaza crisis."
The program will initially concentrate on Gaza's southern three districts, where reported cases of malnutrition and dehydration are multiplying. In many instances, Gazans are trapped in their homes and faced with general food shortages and minimal access to markets or food distribution.
Limited stocks of food supplies and essential non-food items are present at stores and supplier warehouses. "A large percentage of the supply trucks Israel allows into Gaza contain Israeli-made goods for commercial sale, but these items are largely unaffordable to the majority of the population here," one source told UPA.
Israel's military operations in Gaza have presented grave obstacles for local humanitarian supply trucks, which cannot reach needy populations. Through the UPA grant, which was made possible entirely by individual donations, RI will purchase commercial goods from locally available food supplies, package them into parcels and deliver them through local partners to displaced families that need them the most.
Mounting Crisis
Diplomats and humanitarian officials the world over have expressed outrage over humanitarian conditions in Gaza since Israel launched its 22-day offensive, killing over 1,300 Palestinians and wounded over 5,300 others.
UN humanitarian chief John Holmes called the casualty toll "shocking," saying, "What I saw on the ground was even more shocking than I had expected in the extent and the nature of the destruction that there was there."
"What is absolutely needed is access, access, access," EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told reporters Monday, after a meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers. "We are disappointed that the opening of the crossings for humanitarian aid is not always completely fulfilled as we would like to see," she said.
Echoing these concerns, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said, "One-hundred and fifty lorries are entering more or less, and 600-800 should enter every day. The number of trucks is completely insufficient."
According to UPA Director of Programs Melinda Borne, "Although we are glad to see an end to the constant barrage of violence visited upon the people of Gaza in the past month, we also cannot accept a return to the status quo in which 1.5 million Palestinians are forced to wait for their most basic food, water and medical needs."
Please help us continue to provide emergency relief to the besieged people of Gaza.
