How the world can avert more death and despair in Gaza

What you need to know:

Since early April, weekly “Great March of Return” demonstrations have focused on the plight of more than 700,000 Palestinian refugees driven from their homeland in 1948. Exacerbated by the Trump administration’s move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Monday – when 60 Palestinians died and about 2,700 were injured – and further fueled by Israeli independence anniversary celebrations and Tuesday’s Palestinian commemoration of Al Nakba (“The Catastrophe”), another catastrophe appears to be unfolding.

Second, Washington needs to restore full funding to USAID and to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides education, medical care, and food aid to more than half of Gaza’s 2 million people. The United States, UNRWA’s largest donor nation, gave $355 million to UNRWA in 2017 for Gaza, but the Trump administration has pledged only $125 million in 2018 — and has thus far announced it is withholding $110 million of that commitment. A senior official told me during my visit that unless full funding is restored by the end of May, UNRWA will further curtail its stretched-thin medical and food programs, and also lay off 9,000 teachers and close 275 schools, leaving 273,000 children and youth without classes to attend after summer break. Without education, the children and youth of Gaza will increasingly have nothing left to lose – a lethal incubator of anger and violence within Gaza, and a potentially overwhelming security risk to Israel. UNRWA funding could be restored now.

Third, 12 years of restrictions on border crossings have had devastating consequences. More than 90 per cent of Gazan children under the age of 12, who make up one-third of the population, have never left Gaza; the only Israelis most have ever seen are pointing tanks and guns their way. Also, workers from Gaza can no longer cross the border to work, shortchanging both Gaza and Israel. In addition, two senior hospital officials in Gaza City told me that there are no CT scanners, MRI machines, or radiation equipment (and relatively little chemotherapy medication) in Gaza. Patients who have cancer – and especially women with breast cancer – must travel to Ramallah. However, many of these patients are denied permits to travel. As a result, Gaza’s cancer survival rates are significantly lower than in countries like Israel and the United States. People with serious illnesses should not be sentenced to death in the name of Israeli security. The most egregious border restrictions could be lifted.

How the world can avert more death and despair in Gaza

What you need to know:

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