GAZA is suffering a “crisis on top of a catastrophe”, MPs heard yesterday.
Jamie McGoldrick, humanitarian co-ordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories at the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, revealed how he watched aid hospitals struggle as Great Return March victims kept coming last month.
Thousands of Palestinians have been injured by Israeli troops, with dozens killed.
Giving evidence to the International Development Committee, McGoldrick, from Glasgow, said: “Gaza has been a catastrophe for years. On top of that, with this 30th of March, you have got a crisis on top of a catastrophe.”
MPs heard how the Israeli blockade delays vital supplies.
Aimee Shalan, chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians, said in one case breast prosthesis were held for so long that one patient waiting to benefit died.
And Rachel Evers of the UN Relief and Works Agency said her team may be unable to open schools in August due to funding stresses. She said: “We are going to be making some very serious decisions in July.”
On unemployment and a lack of opportunities for young people, Shalan said: “There’s no sort of sense that there’s a future for anybody in Gaza and that’s having a huge effect on their psychological state.
“There’s no traction for change at all. You have young people now saying that life is a living death.”
Just three per cent of households have access to clean drinking water and electricity supplies run for just four hours a day.
McGoldrick, who recently led UN efforts in Yemen, said his team had secured just 18 per cent of the funding needed and the country’s economy and healthcare is at the point of collapse.
He went on: “There is no humanitarian solution to this problem, it’s a political problem.”
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