Population of Gaza is in peril, says UN relief chief

THE head of the UN relief agency in Gaza has called on Israel to allow immediate access for supplies and aid into the war-torn region warning that up to 90% of its citizens are surviving on handouts.

Attempts were being made to prevent the radicalisation of hundreds of thousands of children in the enclave, said John Ging, director of the region’s UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Appearing before a packed Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee, the Irishman was quizzed about Gaza following Israel’s offensive there this year which left a reported 1,400 people dead. “We will not succeed unless the situation on the ground changes,” he warned TDs, senators and several ambassadors who also attended. “There’s a civilian population in peril.”

But both the Israelis and the Palestinians were turning to violence, he said. Rocket attacks into Israel had to stop and any peace process similar to the North’s needed a complete cessation of violence, he said. But there had been no relaxing of border restrictions in and out of Gaza, said Mr Ging. This had left Gaza’s 1.5 million people in a desperate situation, led to increased smuggling in tunnels from Egypt and offered them little alternative to the conflict. “People are now languishing in the rubble of their despair,” he said.