Is Israel restricting UNRWA's reconstruction efforts in Gaza?
While UNRWA is assessing the houses damaged or destroyed during the Gaza war, some Hamas officials are accusing the international relief organization of working with Israel to the detriment of the Palestinian people.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Palestinians are hoping for reconstruction to start and for the Israeli blockade to be lifted following Israel’s bloodiest war on Hamas, and especially after Hamas handed over the reins of power in the Gaza Strip to the unity government, led by the Palestinian Authority (PA). However, the blockade continues to exist and the reconstruction has become conditional, as is the case of lifting the blockade. Meanwhile, Hamas continues to provide financial support for its popular base, despite Israel’s policy to dry up its income sources.
Two weeks before the donors’ conference was held in Cairo on Oct. 12, which succeeded in bringing in necessary funds of $5.4 billion from international and Arab countries to rebuild Gaza, a team affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was tasked with reporting and registering the damaged houses during the latest war for compensation. The team visited the house of Abu Uday in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza to check and register the damages.
A few days later, one of the UNRWA workers returned and told the family to refer to the organization’s main office in the city of Gaza, without providing further information. The family found out later that UNRWA would not undertake the reconstruction of one of the apartments in the house because it was a direct target of Israeli attacks.
Apparently, Abu Uday’s four-story house was hit because a man affiliated with the Palestinian resistance had lived with his siblings in one of the apartments before the war.
