United Nations, October 29: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on Israel Wednesday to allow the reconstruction of Gaza, deploring conditions there nearly a year after a devastating Israeli military offensive.
“Ten months after hostilities ended in Gaza, we see no progress on reconstruction or the re-opening of borders,” he said at a news conference.
Ban said 4.5 billion dollars in reconstruction aid had been pledged at a donors conference in Egypt in March but “little if any of that money has been delivered.”
“Families have not been able to rebuild their homes. Clinics and schools are still in ruins,” he said.
“I urge Israel to accept the UN reconstruction proposals as set forth, recognizing that the only true guarantee of peace is people’s well-being and security,” he said.
Israel’s war on Gaza killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and wounded 5,450 others.
Among the dead were 437 children, 110 women, 123 elderly men, 14 medics and four journalists.
The wounded include 1,890 children and 200 people in serious condition.
The war also left tens of thousands of houses destroyed, while their residents remained homeless.
Israel, which wants to crush any Palestinian liberation movement, responded to Hamas’s win in the elections with sanctions, and almost completely blockaded the impoverished coastal strip after Hamas seized power in 2007, although a ‘lighter’ siege had already existed before.
Human rights groups, both international and Israeli, slammed Israel’s siege of Gaza, branding it “collective punishment.”
A group of international lawyers and human rights activists had also accused Israel of committing “genocide” through its crippling blockade of the Strip.
Gaza is still considered under Israeli occupation as Israel controls air, sea and land access to the Strip.
The Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza’s sole border crossing that bypasses Israel, rarely opens as Egypt is under immense US and Israeli pressure to keep the crossing shut.
Fatah has little administrative say in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and has no power in Arab east Jerusalem, both of which were illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.
Israel also currently occupies the Lebanese Shabaa Farms and the Syrian Golan Heights.
—Agencies