Page 4 - Palestine Refugees

Amid Gaza crisis, India donates $2.5 mn to UN for Palestinian refugees

India has donated USD 2.5 million to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, prompting the UNRWA on Tuesday to welcome the generous contribution at a "difficult time", particularly in Gaza. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), functional since 1950, carries out direct relief and work programmes for registered Palestine refugees. It is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from UN Member States. India on Monday gave UNRWA USD 2.5 million as part of its annual contribution of USD 5 million for the year 2023-24 to support the agency's core programmes and services, including education, healthcare, relief, and social services provided to Palestinian refugees, the Representative Office of India at Ramallah said. The contribution was handed over by the Representative of India (ROI) to Palestine, Renu Yadav, to the Director of Partnerships, Department of External Relations of UNRWA, Karim Amer. The ROI underlined India's continued support

Panicked patients, medics flee Gaza hospital as Israel looks for Hamas base

Hundreds of patients, medical staff and people displaced by Israel's war against Hamas left Gaza's largest hospital Saturday, with one evacuee describing a panicked and chaotic scene as Israeli forces searched and face-scanned men among those leaving and took some away. Israel's military has been searching Gaza City's Shifa Hospital for a Hamas command center that it alleges is located under the facility a claim Hamas and hospital staff deny. The evacuation, which Israel says was voluntary, left behind only Israeli troops and a small number of health workers to care for those too sick to move. We left at gunpoint, Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside. He said he saw Israeli troops detain three men. Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelt

Hamas war: Israel takes journalists on tour in Gaza - here's what they saw

An Israeli tank rolls across a sandy moonscape, surrounded by rubble. Damaged buildings are visible in every direction. Toppled trees lie along the Mediterranean shoreline. The Israeli military escorted international journalists into the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, giving them a glimpse of the aftermath of 12 days of heavy fighting in the area. Israel has been at war against Gaza's Hamas rulers since the Islamic militant group carried out a bloody cross-border attack on October 7, killing over 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping more than 240 others. Israel responded with weeks of intense airstrikes before launching a ground operation on October 27. "It's been a long two weeks of fighting," said Lt. Col. Ido, whose last name was withheld under military guidelines. We've lost some soldiers. The initial focus of the operation was northern Gaza, near the Israeli border, before troops moved in on Gaza City, which Israel says is the center of Hamas' military ...

Israeli forces cut off north Gaza; death toll passes 10,000, says report

Already, the Palestinian death toll passed 10,000, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday

Release of hostages requires Israel ceasefire, says Hamas official

The number of hostages kidnapped from Israel and held by Hamas in Gaza has also been updated to 229

Palestinian medics struggle to save lives as Israel continues bombardment

For hours and hours, Moen Abu Aish digs through the rubble of demolished homes to find survivors of Israeli airstrikes, toiling in a vast and desperate search complicated by the shortage of critical supplies and the sheer scope of destruction across the Gaza Strip. Even as rescue worker Abu Aish, 58, and his colleagues struggle to pry lifeless bodies from the concrete and twisted metal where residential towers once stood, the death toll keeps rising. Gaza's Health Ministry has reported that Israel's bombardment launched after Hamas mounted a bloody, unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 has killed more than 2,700 Palestinians, many of them women and children. But far more Palestinians have been killed than have been officially reported, with 1,200 people, among them some 500 minors, believed to be trapped under the rubble awaiting rescue, or recovery, health authorities said. They based their estimates on distress calls they received. So many times medics say they hear vict

'Get us out of this hellhole': SOS messages by UNRWA staff in Gaza

The 13,000-strong staff working with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees is terrified and tired and described the situation in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip as a hellhole, a spokeswoman for the agency said. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is the largest UN agency working in the Gaza Strip, both in terms of the size of its operations as well as the number of staff. The 13,000-strong UNRWA staff in Gaza includes teachers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, warehouse workers, logisticians, technicians and drivers. We have a very, very big operation in the Gaza Strip. What we hear from our staff is that they are terrified and they're tired. They want all of this to come to an end and the message that we're getting is: Get us out of this hellhole. This has become hell', UNRWA Director of Communications Juliette Touma told reporters here through video conference on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Touma said the messages of SOS' have

India donates $2.5 mn for education, healthcare of Palestinian refugees

India presented a cheque of USD 2.5 million, the second tranche of the pledged USD 5 million annual support, to a UN agency on Monday that will go directly to serve the schools, health centres and other basic services run by the organisation to support Palestinian refugees. India has given USD 22.5 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) since 2018. UNRWA is a UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. "The Government of India presented USD 2.5 million (second tranche of a total contribution of USD 5 million for the Financial Year 2022-2023) to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in support of the Agency's core programmes and services, including education, healthcare, relief and social services," the Representative Office of India (ROI) in Ramallah said in a statement. "The financial contribution was presented to Ms. Xuran Wu, .

Facebook violated rights of Palestinian users during Gaza war, report finds

Actions by Facebook and its parent Meta during last year's Gaza war violated the rights of Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation and non-discrimination, a report commissioned by the social media company has found. The report on Thursday from independent consulting firm Business for Social Responsibility confirmed long-standing criticisms of Meta's policies and their uneven enforcement as it relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: It found the company over-enforced rules when it came to Arabic content and under-enforced content in Hebrew. It, however, did not find intentional bias at Meta, either by the company as a whole or among individual employees. The report's authors said they found no evidence of racial, ethnic, nationality or religious animus in governing teams and noted Meta has "employees representing different viewpoints, nationalities, races, ethnicities, and religions relevant to this conflict". Rather, it found ..

Arab aid to UN Palestinian refugee agency continues to decline: Official

The annual Arab financial aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) had declined to 3 per cent of UNRWA's budget in 2022, a UN advisor said

India contributes $2.5 million to UN RWA for Palestine refugees

India contributed USD 2.5 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)

UN agency for Palestinian refugees appeals for $38 mn emergency aid

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees is urgently appealing for USD 38 million for emergency needs in Gaza as a result of conflict between Israel and the territory's Hamas rulers.

Can Israel keep alienating its own Palestinian citizens? It has 2 options

Israel faces a clear choice. However, anger often trumps self-interest - especially between Israelis and Palestinians

The promised conquered land

Mr Khalidi has written a sharply analytical and even-handed history of the nature of the Israeli state that would make educative reading even for Israel's supporters

India contributes $5 mn to UN agency working for Palestinian refugees

India increased its annual financial assistance to the UNRWA by four fold, from $1.25 million to $5 million, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Palestine in February 2018

India among 20 countries to take $100 mn pledge to help Palestine refugees

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres voiced gratitude for the generous pledges of approximately $100 million made at the Extraordinary Ministerial Conference in Rome on March 15