At the end of April 2009, UNRWA and the UN Development Program (UNDP) completed their assessments of damage caused during the last offensive on Gaza. Some 3,500 houses were totally destroyed or are beyond repair and many others have yet to be repaired. Israel has not allowed cement and building materials into Gaza since June 2007. Internally displaced people, living on sand dunes in tents provided by international aid agencies, and cooking on kerosene burners and using portable toilets, report a feeling of despair and lack of safety.
However, some ingenuity is being used to deal with these obstacles. For instance, to mitigate cement shortages, concrete segments of the old Rafah border wall, which lay abandoned after its partial demolition in January 2008, are being salvaged.
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At the same time, gaps in the water and sewage infrastructure continue to threaten the health and environment of Gazans. According to a UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report on May 15, raw sewage was back-flowing into homes in Khan Younis (southern Gaza Strip) due to the deterioration of the sewage and waste-water treatment systems. During April, only three truckloads of plastic pipes for water and wastewater projects for the private sector were allowed into Gaza. There has been a general ban on plastic pipe deliveries since late October 2008. Clearly more ingenuity must be utilized to rebuild the sewage system.
But in addition to building materials, other basic, non-threatening materials are held up at the border. The Logistics Cluster reports that it continues to request clearance of the following items currently listed as 'under review' in the document 'Clearance Status of Humanitarian Cargo'
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Banking Crisis
A banking and liquidity crisis is also affecting the lives of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: civil servants are struggling to get their salaries, and humanitarian aid is being delayed. Thousands of welfare benefit recipients are not getting their dues."The banking system in Gaza is on the verge of collapse because there is not enough physical cash," European Commission representative Christian Berger said. "Our projects cannot receive the necessary cash." Israel agreed to allow NIS 50 million to enter per month (approximately $12.5 million), but Gaza requires a minimum of NIS 100 million per month (approximately $25 million), said Berger.
UPA had previously encountered some challenges getting money to certain Gaza banks to pay for projects that we guaranteed, but at this time we’ve been successful getting bank wire transfers through.
In other words, the banking system has certainly not collapsed, but for large-scale cash payments programs like that run by UNRWA or UNDP, there is an impending liquidity crisis. Pressure must be brought upon Israel to allow more physical cash through if the economy is not to face a severe crisis – otherwise cash smuggled in from Egypt might become the main source of liquidity, creating a huge black market. (Not all the tunnels have been destroyed, contrary to what the mainstream media may have implied). I would guess this isn’t Israel’s goal. In the meantime, vouchers may have to be used again in place of actual cash, in order to begin what reconstruction is possible.
