OPTI

Shane Stevenson, Oxfam Country Director for the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel said:   

“Finally, for the first of 12 consecutive nights, two million Palestinians in Gaza, including hundreds of thousands of traumatized children, can rest rather than lie awake in fear as bombs fly over their homes.  And civilians across Israel will be spared the threat of rocket attacks.  

Wheat flour reserves in the Occupied Palestinian Territory could be exhausted within three weeks and the cost of this food staple has surged by nearly 25% because of the Ukraine crisis, warns Oxfam.

400,000 people in Gaza do not have access to regular water supply after 11 days of bombardment devastated electricity and water services and severely impacted the three main desalination plants in Gaza city , Oxfam warned today.

Oxfam said today that it cannot reach around 450,000 or more people in Gaza because of fighting and aerial bombardment. Oxfam staff are trying to resume their humanitarian and livelihood programmes with its network of partners but the destruction and indiscriminate threat to life make any emergency aid, at the moment, impossible to mount. The international agency should be providing food, clean water, sanitation and child protection support but the bombing is making it too dangerous for anyone to leave their homes. 

In response to the release of the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian “Peace Plan,” Noah Gottschalk, Oxfam America’s Humanitarian Policy Lead said, “The Trump administration’s proposal isn’t a peace deal - it’s a roadmap to permanent occupation. By legitimizing ongoing rights violations and entrenching existing political divisions, it further dims the prospects for peace. It also undermines any remaining hopes for the United States to serve as a credible broker between Israelis and Palestinians in the future. Oxfam calls on Members of Congress and Presidential candidates to swiftly and adamantly reject this proposal.

In response to Israeli military forces destroying a Swedish-funded EUR 53.000 Palestinian water reservoir in Einnoun, east Tubas in the Occupied West Bank, Oxfam Country Director, Shane Stevenson said: “This community has been left devastated, not knowing when the army will return to destroy their final remaining sources of fresh water. 200 families are scared and intimidated by these type of military incursions, which systematically deny Palestinians their basic rights, including the right to water.”

Today, the European Court of Justice has ruled in favor of labeling products originating from illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

A Palestinian Bedouin community is at imminent risk of forcible transfer, a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The most recent escalation of violence in Gaza and southern Israel has come at terrible human cost. The recent ceasefire announcement is certainly a welcome one, but is only the first step on a long road toward lasting peace.