A senior official from the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, says the Palestinian nation and resistance groups will not remain silent in the face of the deteriorating economic situation in the Gaza Strip caused by the tight Israeli blockade, and will take proper measures to assuage the sufferings of the local people.
Suhail al-Hindi, a member of Hamas political bureau, told Palestinian Information Center on Monday that his group and other Gaza-based resistance movements would never stand idle and would acquire proper medical treatment for Palestinian patients in the impoverished coastal sliver.
“The resistance has its own tools and will use them to impose equations and deliver its message to the enemy,” the Hamas official stressed.
“Neither our people nor the resistance will accept an equation where the Zionists live in health and prosperity and our people live in poverty, hunger and sickness,” he noted.
The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007 when Hamas took control of the coastal enclave.
The siege has inflicted severe hardship on residents. The poverty rate among Gaza’s population has reached 53 percent, while “extreme poverty” stands at 33.8 percent, according to statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
About 68 percent of families do not have enough to eat, while 80 percent of Gazans are dependent on aid.
The area’s unemployment rate stands at 45.1 percent, according to PCBS.
Last week, fifty-three Democrat members of the US Congress warned of the grim humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, and denounced the Israeli regime’s ban on the entry of essential materials into the impoverished coastal enclave and collective punishment of Palestinians there.
The lawmakers, in a letter addressed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, described the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza as “untenable.”
“Ensuring that Palestinians residing in Gaza receive humanitarian aid is vital to securing the well-being of Gaza's 2.1 million residents,” the letter continued.
The legislators, led by Mark Pocan and Debbie Dingell, noted that Gaza's humanitarian situation has been “exacerbated” three months after Israel's 11-day onslaught on the strip which killed more than 250 people, including women and children, and “left an estimated 1.3 million Palestinians in need of humanitarian assistance.”