exactly why the UN needs to get inbetween these two countries. Its no joke when Children get killed. It needs to stop its a cycle of retaliations and the US vetoed a cease fire order. WTF is wrong with our government?

Indeed they do. Egypt has stated it's reasons for not opening the Rafah crossing.

......................................................


http://mingle2.com/topic/show/194793

Egypt in particular has come under harsh criticism for not opening up the Rafah crossing, the only access to Gaza that does not go through Israel. Its opponents accuse Egypt of joining Israel in blockading the territory in an attempt to remove Hamas, which took control in the tiny coastal strip in 2007 in fierce battles with loyalists of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Aboul Gheit repeated Egypt's argument that it cannot open Rafah unless Abbas' Palestinian Authority - which runs the West Bank - controls the crossing and international monitors are present.

He said Hamas wants Rafah opened because it would represent implicit Egyptian recognition of the militant group's control of Gaza. Of course this is something we cannot do, Aboul Gheit said, because it would undermine the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority and consecrate the split between Gaza and the West Bank.

...........................................................


UN agencies warn of food shortage unless Gaza border crossings re-open
[WFP continues food assistance in Gaza]

WFP continues food assistance in Gaza
22 June 2007 – United Nations agencies aiding Palestinian refugees warned today that Gaza could face general food shortages within weeks if the border crossing points into the area remain closed.

Matthias Burchard of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) told reporters in Geneva that the re-opening of the Karni crossing, which used to handle 200 to 300 trucks each day is particularly crucial in order prevent a food shortage in two weeks’ time.

He told a press briefing in Geneva that the refugee poverty rate has now risen to 88 per cent, with UNRWA now providing food aid to 860,000 people in Gaza alone.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said it has been able today to use one crossing point, at Kerem Shalom, to transport some 400 tons of food aid to Gaza, and added that more food aid needs to come in, with commercial stocks running low.

Food and other humanitarian supplies must continue to enter Gaza if a major humanitarian crisis is to be averted, WFP’s Simon Pluess told the press briefing.

Meanwhile, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said it is delivering emergency medical supplies and vaccines to help prevent outbreaks of measles, tuberculosis and other diseases among children in Gaza.

With little access in or out of Gaza, stocks of essential medicines are at critical levels, and health facilities are struggling to address the needs of an “exhausted and traumatized population,” according to a press release from the agency, which said it is working to treat children suffering from shock and extreme stress.

Despite shortages of everything from fuel to medicines, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed today that hospitals inside Gaza were staying open.

WHO also confirmed that Israel had allowed a brief opening at the Erez crossing so that urgent medical cases from Gaza could be transferred to Israeli hospitals.

Amid the worsening humanitarian situation, UNRWA announced it will start a ten-week programme of games for 192,000 children and youth in Gaza tomorrow.



http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=23011&Cr=palestin&Cr1=

...........................................................

Last update - 00:57 14/11/2008
UN: Israel's border closures leave us with no food for Gaza
By Amira Hass, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Service and News Agencies
Tags: Gaza, Food Aid, Israel News

The United Nations on Thursday warned its stocks had run so low that it would not be able to make its next delivery of food to 750,000 needy Gazans on Saturday.

"We've been working here from hand to mouth for quite a long time, so these interruptions on the crossing points affect us immediately," said John Ging, director of UN Relief and Works Agency operations in Gaza.

The Defense Ministry had said it would allow 30 truckloads of humanitarian supplies into Gaza on Thursday. But the crossings were kept shut because militants fired fire rockets and mortars into Israel earlier in the day, security officials said.
Advertisement
Later in the day, Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the army to keep the crossings shut after receiving an intelligence warning of a plan by Palestinian militants to attack the Kerem Shalom border terminal.

Gaza City was dark Thursday evening after a day of violence and retribution, raising the grim prospect of an end to a truce that has stopped most Israeli-Palestinian violence in and around the seaside territory for five months.

Gaza officials shut down their only power plant, cutting off electricity to much of the city of 300,000, after Israel canceled plans to ship in some diesel fuel for the plant as well as 30 trucks full of humanitarian supplies. The Israeli move came after Gaza militants fired at least eight rockets and some mortar shells at Israel on Thursday, according to the Israeli military.

Rocket fire has resumed over the past week after an armed clash in Gaza, and Israel has clamped a tight blockade on the impoverished seaside territory.

Though no one was hurt in the rocket attacks on Israel Thursday, Israel scrapped plans to allow small amounts of fuel and supplies into Gaza. Kamal Obeid, a Hamas official at of the power plant, said fuel was running out and the facility would be shut down completely later Thursday.

Israelis counter that the plant provides less than a quarter of Gaza's electricity, and most of the rest flows in unimpeded on power lines from Israel.

Speaking in Brussels, Belgium, UNRWA head Karen AbuZayd said it was unusual for Israel not to let basic food and medicines in.

"This has alarmed us more than usual because it's never been quite so long and so bad, and there has never been so much negative response on what we need," she said.

"We have hundreds of containers waiting in Ashdod port, holding such simple things such as the wool and the yarn for vocational training centers or centers for the visually impaired to make some money," she said. "We were told these are not humanitarian supplies."

Israel has not allow the UN and other agencies to bring supplies into the Gaza Strip since Nov. 4, when its troops raided the territory to destroy what the army described as a tunnel built by militants.

Six Hamas gunmen were killed in the operations. Gaza militants responded to the incursion with rocket salvoes at southern Israel.

The ceasefire, which began in June, calls on both sides to stop cross-border violence and on Israel to ease the Gaza blockade it tightened after Hamas Islamists seized the territory more than a year ago.

Israel: Truce only to resume when Hamas keeps its commitments

Senior Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad on Thursday said Israel's truce with Hamas in Gaza, ruptured by a flare-up in cross-border fighting, will resume only when the Palestinian militant group keeps its commitments.

"The lull will return only when we are convinced that Hamas has gone back to its commitment to keep the lull, because it decides when [militants] shoot and when they don't," said Gilad, speaking on Israel Radio.

Gilad defended Israel's closing of the border crossings against claims that it would prevent Gazans from meeting their most basic needs.

"Israel is working to prevent the occurrence of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but will not endanger its soldiers by continuing to supply produce - because Hamas even attacks the crossings' terminals," he told Israel Radio.

"The murderous attacks must end. We are sensitive to the humanitarian situation but there is a serious concern that murderous and terrorist acts will take place."

Israel also held up shipments of European Union-funded fuel to the territory's sole power plant. Palestinian officials said the facility would be shut down later in the day.

Israel blocks entry of 20 EU diplomats into Gaza

Also Thursday, Israel prevented 20 European Union consul generals from entering Gaza on Thursday after a recent upsurge in clashes between the Israel Defense Forces and Gaza militants.

The consuls had planned to meet with businesspeople and human rights activists in the Hamas-ruled coastal territory in order to learn about the humanitarian situation.

Early in the day, Palestinian mortar and rocket gunners bombarding southern Israel after the IDF killed four Hamas gunmen in the Strip on Wednesday.

A senior official at the French Consulate, which had arranged the trip, said he could not remember another time when Israel had prevented diplomats from entering Gaza over reasons that were not security-related.

Israel Defense Forces spokesman Peter Lerner told Haaretz that Israel had informed the diplomats on Wednesday of its intention to prevent their entry, and yet they still attempted to cross into Gaza.

"The reason their entry was prevented was because it was not humanitarian. The policy today is only to allow the most essential entry... I hope [Gaza militants] will stop shooting missiles and then we can return to the previous situation," he said.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1037141.html



...........................................................



From The Sunday Times
December 14, 2008
Gaza families eat grass as Israel locks border
Marie Colvin

AS a convoy of blue-and-white United Nations trucks loaded with food waited last night for Israeli permission to enter Gaza, Jindiya Abu Amra and her 12-year-old daughter went scrounging for the wild grass their family now lives on.

“We had one meal today - khobbeizeh,” said Abu Amra, 43, showing the leaves of a plant that grows along the streets of Gaza. “Every day, I wake up and start looking for wood and plastic to burn for fuel and I beg. When I find nothing, we eat this grass.”

Abu Amra and her unemployed husband have seven daughters and a son. Their tiny breeze-block house has had no furniture since they burnt the last cupboard for heat.

“I can’t remember seeing a fruit,” said Rabab, 12, who goes with her mother most mornings to scavenge. She is dressed in a tracksuit top and holed jeans, and her feet are bare.

Conditions for most of the 1.5m Gazans have deteriorated dramatically in the past month, since a truce between Israel and Hamas, the ruling Islamist party, broke down.

Israel says it will open the borders again when Hamas stops launching rockets at southern Israel. Hamas says it will crack down on the rocket launchers when Israel opens the borders.

The fragile truce technically ends this Thursday, and there have been few signs it will be renewed. Nobody knows how to resolve the stalemate. Secret talks are under way through Egyptian intermediaries, although both sides deny any contact.

Israel controls the borders and allows in humanitarian supplies only sporadically. Families had electricity for six hours a day last week. Cooking gas was available only through the illegal tunnels that run into Egypt, and by last week had jumped in price from 80 shekels per canister (£14) to 380 shekels (£66).

The UN, which has responsibility for 1m refugees in Gaza, is in despair. “The economy has been crushed and there are no imports or exports,” said John Ging, director of its relief and works agency.

“Two weeks ago, for the first time in 60 years, we ran out of food,” he said. “We used to get 70 to 80 trucks per day, now we are getting 15 trucks a day, and only when the border opens. We’re living hand to mouth.”

He has four days of food in stock for distribution to the most desperate - and no idea whether Israel will reopen the border. The Abu Amra family may have to eat wild grass for the foreseeable future.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5338014.ece

.......................................................


Seems the Israelis have no problem refusing UN Food Aid to go through.

Definitely not a prison.......you get three meals a day in prison.

No problem denying Diplomats access to Gaza either to see what's going on.


But that's for security reasons. Gaza is occupied even without troops in place.

How come you didn't post any pictures of the slaughtered children of Israel from the thousands of rocket attacks?There were over 3,000 rocket attacks in 2008 alone.

http://www.steveemerson.com/docs/testimony/1996-03-12%20Testimony.pdf