News / Palestine

UN distributes $1.7mn among Gazan refugees

Tuesday, 25 October 2016 6:07 AM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 25 October 2016 10:45 AM ]

A man stands on top of a building destroyed in the 50-day Israeli war on the Gaza Strip during a winter storm in the al-Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, January 6, 2014. (Photo by AFP)

The United Nations (UN) has distributed more than 1.7 million dollars in aid among Palestinian refugee families, who lost their homes in Israel’s latest military onslaught on the Gaza Strip.

The United Nation Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said in a statement on Monday that it had allocated 951,000 dollars for reconstruction and 759,000 dollars for intensive repair work to 242 refugee families in the impoverished Palestinian coastal enclave.

Israel launched its latest war on the Gaza Strip in early July 2014. The 50-day military aggression, which ended on August 26, 2014, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children. Over 11,100 others — including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people — were also wounded in the war.

Israel continues to carry out airstrikes against the Palestinian sliver from time to time. Israeli soldiers also shell Palestinian lands in the northern and eastern sectors of the terrain on a fairly regular basis, preventing farmers from working on their own lands.

Additionally, the Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli siege since June 2007. The blockade has led to a dramatic decline in the standards of living as well as high levels of unemployment and poverty.

Bo Schack, the director of operations for UNRWA in the Gaza Strip, warned last week that the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip and restrictions on the entry of construction materials into the enclave “are negatively impacting the lives of Palestinians there.”

Smoke rises from east Gaza City after Israeli military struck an area in the Gaza Strip, October 5, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

He said Israeli actions are hindering peace and stability in the Gaza Strip, calling for measures to alleviate the sufferings of Gazans.

The Israeli minister for military affairs Avigdor Lieberman threatened on Monday that the Tel Aviv regime’s next war on Gaza would be the “last” one, and that it would “totally destroy” the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas.

Fathi Hammad, a political leader of Hamas, later dismissed the remarks by the extremist Israeli politician.

“All previous defense ministers have threatened us and all of them have died. The last of them is (Shimon) Peres, who is resting in the tombs of hell. So we are in no way afraid and this is a powerful message from Gaza to Lieberman,” he said.

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