GAZA, (PIC)
The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said more than 650,000 children in Gaza are out of school and living among the rubble, stressing that the Strip cannot lose an entire generation of education for two years.
This came after Lazzarini’s reception of $2 million from the Saudi Embassy in the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Monday, in support of the UN agency’s programs and operations.
The UNRWA Commissioner said, “We cannot afford to lose an entire generation for two successive years”, elaborating, “That is why UNRWA, beyond its life-saving operations, has resumed some learning activities in Gaza.”
One year after the “profound suffering and loss, Gaza has become a completely unrecognizable place and a cemetery for tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of whom are children,” he added.
He explained that the blatant disregard for international humanitarian law and the near-total collapse of civil order are crippling the humanitarian response in Gaza, where “a sea of rubble has replaced the former streets, with almost the entire population now displaced.”
Lazzarini warned of the dire consequences if the Israeli bills to stop UNRWA are adopted, saying that the recent Israeli aggression in the northern part of the Strip “is particularly worrying, as there is no safe place to resort to. In the south, living conditions have become unbearable as Gaza once again teeters on the brink of man-made famine.”
The Israeli occupation forces continue their incursion into northern Gaza for the tenth consecutive day amidst heavy air and artillery bombardment, a siege and starvation, especially in the Jabalia refugee camp, and the complete isolation of the governorate from Gaza, where the Israeli occupation army prevents the entry of water, food, and medicine supplies, and has committed massacres against civilians, killing dozens and wounding hundreds.
With full US support, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, resulting in more than 140,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of dozens of children, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.
