The head of the U.N. relief and works agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) announced earlier this week that the Hamas-ruled enclave of Gaza will run out of money by the end of next month.
The Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Pierre Krähenbühl revealed this news while briefing officials via video-link, along with UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov, on the overall political and humanitarian situation surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Krähenbühl laid out the minimum budget for running Gaza’s basic facilities. The figure comes out to $1.2 billion for one fiscal year and funds everything from running schools to basic sanitation.
The recent announcement by the UN comes as no surprise to anyone following the deterioration of Gaza over the past year. The Strip has been struggling to supply the most basic facilities for its citizens, including clean water, since at least late 2017.
Of course for long, the obvious fact that no one in the international community wants to come to terms with, is the aspect that the violent Hamas government which cares more about perpetuating a militant agenda than caring for its own people, is the prime cause for this rampant dysfunction. Now, the situation in Gaza is so bad that even UN officials are willing to recognize how the infighting and shameless corruption within the Palestinian leadership is, in fact, behind the crisis. The official press release of the UN stated that any attempt to remedy the situation in Gaza is “doomed to fail without resolving intra-Palestinian division,” a nice way of saying that the leadership has to get its act together. No one should be holding their breath.
