Food Crisis Worsening in Gaza

GENEVA (AFP) — Food is running short for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the impoverished Gaza Strip and more aid is urgently needed to prevent a humanitarian crisis, the World Food Programme said on Friday.

Some 302,000 people need food aid in Gaza, equivalent to nearly two-thirds of the population not including refugees, WFP spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told journalists.

"The situation is getting worse by the day," she said.

Nearly 70 percent of the 1.5 million people in Gaza live on less than 250 dollars (169 euros) a month, while food accounts for 60 percent of household expenditure.

Gaza has been under strict economic sanctions since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in June, with Israel cutting off food and fuel supplies.

Anaemia rates have risen to 77.5 percent as Gaza's isolation has deepened, Berthiaume said.

The WFP said it has raised its Gaza appeal budget to 141 million dollars due to higher logistical costs and the rising price of foodstuffs.

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Thursday that the isolation of Gaza was causing untold misery and fostering extremism.

"I would like the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza to be acknowledged and there to be some recognition that only a third of the people in Gaza support Hamas," said Karen Koning AbuZayd, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency.

"We are seeing evidence of stunting of the children, their growth is slowing, because our ration is only 61 percent of what people should have and that has to be supplemented," she said.

Article here.

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Israel Must Change its Policies in Ending the Isolation of the People of Gaza

Oxfam Press Release - December 2007

For aid to be effective, donors need to insist Israel changes its policies towards occupied Palestinian Territories

For aid to be effective, donors need to insist Israel changes its policies towards occupied Palestinian Territories Millions of dollars of aid is being lost due to Israeli policies towards the occupied Palestinian territories and must be challenged by donor governments meeting in Paris to pledge funds for the Palestinian Authority this Monday, according to aid agency Oxfam International.

Jeremy Hobbs, head of Oxfam International, said: “More aid will not be effective until donor governments insist on a rapid change in Israel’s movement restrictions in the occupied Palestinian territories and the ending of the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Many governments around the world are generous donors to the Palestinians. Their aid is vital to help build the Palestinian economy and a viable state. But donor governments are not sufficiently critical of Israeli policies, which wreck the projects they fund. They are investing precious aid funds, but without holding Israel accountable this aid will be more and more ineffective.

“It is not enough simply to plough more money into Palestine – foreign governments and the Palestinian Authority must increase the pressure on the Israeli government to lift the blockade of Gaza and make it possible for people in the West Bank to go about their business. This is essential if the Annapolis peace process is to work."

Read the rest of the story here.

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Video: The Media and its Portrayal of Palestine and Israel

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land compares the differences in U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis between Palestine and Israel. The film demonstrates how the U.S. mainstream media (MSM) continually perpetuates mis-perceptions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the American public.

In fact, pro-Israel groups are screening American news reports in order to make its invasion and illegal occupation of Palestine invisible so that Israel maintains a favorable image in the eyes of the American people.

MSM (ever the complacent one now) even spins the language used to describe illegal homes built on Palestinian land to skew perception, eliciting American sympathy, by using terms such as neighborhood instead of settlement.

Also MSM will highlight the deaths of Israeli people in an 'American theme', i.e. introducing you, the viewer, to the family, portraits of the slain, the funeral, etc., but they dismiss Palestinians as if they are non-people, sometimes not even reporting them.

Unfortunately, our MSM has been bought and sold and so we really are not receiving any 'real' news information at all (pretty much all of it is being screened by someone including the White House) which forces anyone desiring real world news and information, commentaries and opinion to look to foreign news coverage or rogue reporting...

As for me, I'm getting ready to unplug the television because there isn't much real journalism or news on it anymore except Democracy Now! and I can get their information via the Internet.. The only 'news' station I watch is CNN and I can only take bits of it before they bore me to death with their non-news agenda.

Remember what news used to be like? Well, it seems we don't get it now and thus, most of the American public is in the dark about what is really going on in our country or world today... How I pine for those days when REAL news reporters, journalists, commentaries and opinions were on t.v. Now that was news!

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