From a cooking gas shop to a women’s collective making toys from recyclables, meet Gaza’s entrepreneurs who are adapting to a crumbling environment that the UN says will become “unliveable,” in less than a year.
The United Nations’ World Refugee Day, observed annually on June 20, should not merely represent a reminder of “the courage, strength and determination of women, men and children who are forced to flee their homeland under threat of persecution, conflict and violence.” It should also be an opportunity for the international community to truly understand and actively work towards finding a sustainable remedy to forced displacement.
A plan to build a cable car for tourists in Jerusalem’s occupied Old City has largely been a local issue so far. That changed on on Thursday, when Palestinian concerns about the new transit route were raised to the international level at a United Nations debate on the fragile peace process.
The Trump administration’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan drew criticism at the United Nations Wednesday, with European and UN officials saying Palestinians should not be coerced into selling off rights to run their own country.
UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn called for Britain to cease arms sales to Israel following a UN report that the Israeli army’s actions against Palestinian protesters in Gaza’s Great March of Return could amount to war crimes. “The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killings and freeze arms sales to Israel,” Corbyn tweeted Friday.
Food assistance in Gaza is suspended, hundreds of Palestinians face eviction in Jerusalem, and international monitors in Hebron are terminated.
Last week, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released statistics ahead of the new year that showed a 69 percent increase in settler attacks on Palestinians in 2018 compared to 2017. OCHA recorded 265 incidents in which Israeli residents of the West Bank allegedly targeted Palestinians or their property. In total, 115 Palestinians were injured in those attacks and 7,900 trees and 540 vehicles were destroyed.
The UN warns Gaza is showing early warning signs of a coming “unprecedented” humanitarian crisis, Israel is still mulling the death penalty, and the World Health Organization examines Palestinians rights to health under the Israeli occupation in this edition of JVP’s month health advisory.
In a first, US Ambassador to UN Nikki Haley declared that she would vote against a resolution condemning Israel’s control of Syrian Golan since 1967. Israel took the land for strict reasons of greed, as then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan conceded, though the illegal occupation is rarely mentioned in the US press.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports on water & sanitation crisis in Gaza, increase in Israeli settler violence. “97 per cent of ground water extracted in Gaza is unfit for human consumption, generating the risk of a waterborne disease outbreak.”