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The rebuilding process in the devastated Palestinian territory will “take an awful lot of time” despite the promised surge in humanitarian deliveries, a UN official in Gaza has warned.
“We’re not just talking about food, healthcare, buildings, roads, infrastructure. We’ve got individuals, families, communities that need to be rebuilt,” Sam Rose, acting director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) in Gaza, told the BBC.
After a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas took effect on Sunday, at least 1,545 aid lorries have crossed into Gaza, the UN said. The lorries brought in desperately needed food, tents, blankets, mattresses and clothes for the winter which had been stuck outside Gaza for months.
The ceasefire deal requires 600 aid lorries, including 50 carrying fuel, to be allowed into Gaza every day during the first phase lasting six weeks, during which Hamas should release 33 Israeli hostages in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
We’re expecting a major uptick in the volume of aid that’s coming in, and of course it’s far easier for us to go and collect that aid because many of the problems that we have faced so far in the war go away when the fighting stops.
We’re no longer moving through an active conflict zone. We no longer need have to co-ordinate all these movements with the Israeli authorities. And we’ve not today… faced any major problems with looting and criminality.
But he also stressed that “we have to get away from thinking of people’s needs in Gaza as a function of the volume of aid”.
Every person in Gaza has been traumatised by what’s gone on. Everyone has lost something. Most of those homes are now destroyed, most of the roads are now destroyed. It’s going to be a long, long process of rehabilitation and rebuilding.
The World Health Organization’s regional director, Hanan Balkhy, meanwhile said it had a 60-day plan to get Gaza’s health system back on its feet to meet the population’s urgent needs and prioritise care for the thousands of people with life-changing injuries.
At least 47,000 people have been killed and 111,000 injured in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has also been displaced multiple times, 60% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed, the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are severe shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.
In October, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimated 1.84 million people across Gaza were experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity, and that 133,000 people were facing catastrophic levels, which can lead to starvation and death.
The following month, an IPC committee warned that there was a strong likelihood that famine was “imminent” in some areas of northern Gaza.
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