Palestine: Humanitarian Situation & Population - Press Conference | United Nations

UN top humanitarian official in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt), Andrea De Domenico, said, “At the moment, we estimated that nine out of every ten people in Gaza Strip had been internally displaced at least once, if not up to 10 times, unfortunately, since October.”

Head of Office for United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt) today (03 Jul) briefed reporters from East Jerusalem on the humanitarian situation in the Strip, via a video link.

He said, “For our programming purposes as humanitarian community, we estimated that the population present in Gaza comprises about 2.1 million people. And we have said since the beginning of the war that basically all of them, unfortunately, are in need of assistance.”

De Domenico continued, “Out of the current Gaza population, we also estimate that 1.9 million are internally displaced multiple times. So for example, the patterns of movement that we have registered in the last few days, they are not necessarily adding to this number because some of them, many of those were already displaced. And then they moved in different areas and now they're moving again, trying to find a safe space, if there is any of such.”

“But beyond these numbers, there are people, men, women, boys and girls, doctors, students, cooks, artists, journalists, teachers, moms, dads, and people that have fears and grievances. And they had probably dreams and hopes, the less and less I fear today unfortunately,” the UN humanitarian added.

He stressed, “What we're seeing, unfortunately is a pattern is that the more and more resemble and go back to the originally identified area where the government of Israel, the IDF, told us that they want to concentrate all the people and that's what the patterns that we consistently see unfolding in front of our eyes.”

De Domenico further explained, “With some people remaining in the north, out of this 2.1 million people, we estimated three under 300,000 or 350,000 are in the north and those cannot come to the south.”

“The strip is completely broken in two as of today and there are military presence that is blocking movements and impeding movements for the civilians, and frequently unfortunately, also obstructing our ability to move,” he added.

“Delivering for us is a daily struggle. Literally we have to make gigantic efforts to sustain some lifeline of our services,” the UN humanitarian stressed.

He explained the importance of delivering fuel, which “allows hospitals to continue providing services, lifesaving, life sustaining services in hospitals. Fuel allows water to be decellularized and provide basically drinking water to people. Fuel allows us to move food around and bring to this multiple number of NGOs that are offering food and meals to people that is desperately in need.”

De Domenico highlighted, “Nowhere and no one is safe in Gaza.”

“We've seen over and over military operations and bombardment happening also in the heart of the humanitarian safe zone declared by Israel. 274 aid workers and volunteers, our colleagues, my colleagues have been killed so far. Many of them were killed on duty, others were killed at home with their families when their family members,” he added.

The UN humanitarian also said, “The security of humanitarian workers is deteriorated too, and unfortunately accompanied by those campaigns that call aid organization depressed in for inability to deliver.”

He explained, “We have a dialogue with Israeli daily, literally multiple times, actually. And we explain our challenges, we try to find solutions, we work out understanding that of course war is war and you might have its logic and objectives. But humanitarian assistance is an obligation that all the parties have to respect, Israeli and other armed groups and we keep on calling them all to help us to deliver the assistance that is so dearly needed to desperately to Palestinians.”

On funding, De Domenico said that only 35 percent of the appealed 3.4 billion for the response in Gaza were covered.

He explained, “The reality is that if we will be able to reach the situation where a ceasefire will be called or even a pause. We will not be able to scale up our operation to the level necessary unless those resources are mobilized. So it is absolutely important to invest and mobilize the resources now to make sure that when this will happen, we'll be able to scale up and in the meantime, we will spare no effort, day in day out, to increase our ability to stay and remain in protecting civilians.”