Israel's five-month military closure of the Palestinian territories, which has driven a third of the population to poverty, is the most severe restriction on the areas since Israel occupied them in 1967, the UN said in a report Monday, February 26.
"The combination of border closures, internal movement restrictions and the closing of the international borders constitute the most severe and sustained set of movement restrictions imposed on the Occupied Palestinian Territory since the beginning of the occupation in 1967," said a report by the Gaza office of the UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen.
International aid agencies began emergency food relief programs Monday for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians affected by the crippling Israeli closure, imposed since Israeli-Palestinian violence erupted in late September.
"The severity of the movement restrictions has been compounded by the most draconian internal closure measures ever implemented," said the UN report. "In addition to unprecedented levels of confrontation, the period has been characterized by the most severe movement restrictions ever imposed on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Since the violence broke out on September 28, the UN estimates that the Palestinian five-billion-dollar-a-year economy has lost about $1.15 billion. "About one million persons now live under the poverty line, having risen from an average of about 654,000 in the first nine months of 2000," said the report.
"Moreover, even with a partial relaxation in restrictions on mobility, the report estimates that the poverty rate will rise to about 43.8 percent by end-2001."
Visiting US Secretary of State Colin Powell urged Israel Sunday to lift the closure, saying it did not contribute to security. — (AFP, Jerusalem)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
