UN: Gaza unlivable 10 years after Hamas seized power
REPORT CLAIMS THE TERRITORY IS FALLING BEHIND IN ALMOST ALL DEVELOPMENT AREAS
Adecade after the Islamist group Hamas seized Gaza, the Palestinian enclave is effectively unlivable for its 2 million people, with declining incomes, health care, education, electricity and fresh water, the United Nations said.
In a report examining humanitarian United Nations concludes the situation in Gaza is deteriorating “further and faster” than was forecast only a few years ago. conditions in the territory, which Hamas took over in June 2007 after a brief conflict with forces loyal to the Palestinian National Authority, the
“Across the board we’re watching de-development in slow motion,” Robert Piper, the UN coordinator for humanitarian aid and development for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
“Every indicator, from energy to water to health care to employment to poverty to food insecurity, every indicator is declining. Gazans have been going through this slow motion de-development now for a decade.”
Immediately after Hamas took power, Israel moved to isolate the militant group by restricting the flow of goods and people in and out of Gaza, limiting access to the sea and working with Egypt to enforce a blockade.
At the same time, Hamas has been in near-constant dispute with the West Bank-based Palestinian National Authority, prompting the authority to limit financial transfers to Gaza and, in recent weeks, asking Israel to cut back electricity supplies.
The upshot is that Gaza’s population, which is projected to grow by another 10 per cent in the next three years, is being squeezed on all sides, even as resources become more scarce.
“I see this extraordinarily inhuman and unjust process of strangling gradually two million civilians in Gaza that really pose a threat to nobody,” said Piper.