Less than a week into the Israel-Hamas war, the United Nations\u00a0appealed\u00a0to the world asking for nearly $300 million in aid to assist Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Within a month, the figure nearly\u00a0quadrupled\u00a0as the entire Gaza Strip plunged into a humanitarian catastrophe. <\/p>\n
Three months into the war, international donors, mostly governments, have provided just over half of the requested funds through the UN\u2019s plan, according to\u00a0data\u00a0from the\u00a0UN\u00a0Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs\u2019 (OCHA) Financial Tracking Service. <\/p>\n
The figures reveal that only four-fifths of the emergency funding needed to ensure food security and roughly a quarter of what\u2019s needed for shelter, water and sanitation have been provided. <\/p>\n
Aid organizations say that nearly the entire population of the Gaza Strip faces a humanitarian crisis. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification,\u00a0a\u00a0UN-backed food security agency,\u00a0reported\u00a0on December 21 that \u201cvirtually all households are skipping meals every day\u201d in Gaza. The\u00a0spread\u00a0of\u00a0diseases, including hepatitis, diarrhea and respiratory infections, is putting more lives at risk, according to the World Health Organization. <\/p>\n
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) is reporting that nearly 80% of Gaza\u2019s civilian population of roughly 2.2 million has been displaced since Israel launched its military operation in response to Hamas\u2019 assault on October 7, when militants killed around 1,200 people and took more than 200 others\u00a0hostage, according to Israeli authorities. <\/p>\n
Many are sheltering in tents or overcrowded accommodations in Rafah in southern Gaza, after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told people to flee both northern Gaza and Khan Younis in the south. Displaced Palestinians, many of whom left their homes with little or nothing,\u00a0say they are struggling to stay dry and warm\u00a0as winter temperatures and rains set in. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the UN agency which provides services to more than half of Gaza\u2019s civilians is on the verge of collapse, its leader said in a\u00a0letter\u00a0to the President of the UN General Assembly on December 7.\u00a0As of January 12, more than 150 staff members have\u00a0been killed\u00a0\u2014 more than in any other conflict \u2014 and at least 70% of the remaining staff are displaced, according to the UNRWA. <\/p>\n
The IDF has begun pulling its soldiers out of Gaza, but has said it expects fighting to continue throughout 2024. On December 22, the UN Security Council\u00a0passed a resolution\u00a0calling for further extended humanitarian pauses to allow more aid into Gaza. There has been no pause in fighting since a seven-day span at the end of November which was negotiated as part of an Israel-Hamas hostage release deal. <\/p>\n
Gaza\u2019s long dependence on aid<\/strong> <\/p>\n Gaza has been among the world\u2019s top recipients of aid per capita for years. Before the war, four in five people depended on international help and as many as\u00a01.84 million people\u00a0were food insecure, according to the World Food Program. <\/p>\n The unemployment rate for Gaza was as high as 45% in 2022, according to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics. In 2022, according to the World Bank, South Africa had the highest unemployment rate in the world at 29.8%, and Gaza and the West Bank together were third at 25.7%. <\/p>\n In 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed the Oslo Accords.\u00a0Under the agreement, the PLO gave up armed resistance against Israel in return for promises of an independent Palestinian state. The accords also established the Palestinian Authority (PA)\u00a0as the limited self-rule government for Gaza and the West Bank.\u00a0Hamas,\u00a0an Islamist organization established in 1987, opposed the accords. Its charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the group sees Israel as an illegitimate state occupying the West Bank. <\/p>\n Rising frustration with the PA\u00a0on a number of fronts, including the lack of change,\u00a0led to Hamas winning\u00a0the majority of seats in\u00a0the 2006\u00a0Palestinian Legislative Council election. Fatah, the political\u00a0party forming the backbone of the PA,\u00a0and Hamas\u00a0formed a short-lived coalition government.\u00a0The latter\u00a0forcefully\u00a0took control of Gaza in June 2007. Since then, the\u00a0PA\u00a0only\u00a0exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. <\/p>\n \u201cFrom mid-1990s to early 2000s, Palestine is in this state-building project and a lot of (development) aid goes towards that,\u201d said Yara Asi, an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida who studies Palestinian health and human rights.\u00a0\u201cIn the early 2000s, you start seeing disillusionment \u2014 the promises of Oslo did not come to fruition.\u201d <\/p>\n In 2007, Hamas\u00a0militants\u00a0seized control of Gaza from forces loyal to the PA. Within months, Israel\u2019s security cabinet would designate Gaza as \u201chostile territory.\u201d <\/p>\n Israel then instituted an ongoing blockade, severely limiting the movement of people and\u00a0goods\u00a0by land, sea or air, which it argues is essential to prevent Hamas from arming itself.\u00a0Restrictions extend to goods the Israelis consider as having a dual civilian and military use, such as concrete, agricultural fertilizer compounds and some medical equipment. <\/p>\n \u201cLots of everyday goods and especially building materials could not enter the Gaza Strip because they are on the so-called \u2018dual-use material\u2019 list,\u201d said Ren\u00e9 Wildangel, an adjunct fellow at the International Hellenic University in Thessaloniki, Greece, and a former human rights expert for the Middle East at Amnesty International. <\/p>\n This makes reconstruction difficult, Wildangel said. <\/p>\n The UN said in a 2022\u00a0report\u00a0that the restrictions have had a \u201cprofound impact\u201d on daily living conditions in Gaza and \u201cundermined Gaza\u2019s economy, resulting in high unemployment, food insecurity and aid dependency.\u201d <\/p>\n In the wake of the blockade, trade stalled, jobs disappeared, and more and more families fell into poverty, while the population in Gaza grew by\u00a0nearly 60%, according to an analysis of Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics data. <\/p>\n With Hamas classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union, most of the international community\u00a0cut off\u00a0direct investment to Gaza after 2007. <\/p>\n But the magnitude of need in Gaza meant emergency and humanitarian assistance had to keep coming. Data published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows total foreign aid to the Palestinian territories has been notably higher since the Hamas takeover compared with the post-Oslo era. <\/p>\n But even as foreign aid to Gaza rose in the wake of the Hamas takeover, the amount of aid fluctuates annually, OECD data shows. <\/p>\n After 2007, the US\u00a0bolstered\u00a0its economic assistance to strengthen the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. <\/p>\n In 2018, the Trump administration cut about\u00a0$200 million\u00a0in Palestinian aid and halted contributions to UNRWA. Though Biden\u00a0reinstated\u00a0assistance in 2021, the amounts have never returned to Obama-era levels, which reached as high as $1 billion in 2009. <\/p>\n Qatar has also been a major donor to Gaza, contributing about $1.3 billion since 2019, according to OECD data. The country has even\u00a0provided cash\u00a0to pay civil servants\u2019 salaries and shipped fuel\u00a0to help with generating electricity since at least 2018 with Israel\u2019s approval. <\/p>\n Qatar maintains close ties with both Hamas and Western states, including the United States. <\/p>\n Qatar\u2019s funding has been \u201ca lifeline to the Hamas government\u201d ever since its takeover in 2007, Wildangel said, but added that these funds \u2014 some of which have\u00a0been delivered in suitcases full of cash\u00a0\u2014 have been very hard to track. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, civilians in Gaza continue to face desperate hardship. The UN emergency relief chief said earlier last week that the \u201cgreat majority\u201d of 400,000 Gazans at risk of starving \u201care actually in famine, not just at risk of famine\u201d while the enclave faces a continuing near-total communications blackout. Medicine for Israeli hostages and Palestinians entered Gaza last Wednesday after Qatar brokered a deal with Israel and Hamas. For every box of medication given to a hostage, Palestinians in Gaza would receive 1,000 boxes. <\/p>\n This story has been updated.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n Less than a week into the Israel-Hamas war, the United Nations\u00a0appealed\u00a0to the world asking for nearly $300 million in aid to assist Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Within a month, the figure nearly\u00a0quadrupled\u00a0as the entire Gaza Strip plunged into a humanitarian catastrophe. Three months into the war, international donors, mostly <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14435,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}