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August 16, 2002/Elul 8 5762, Vol. 54, No. 48
Are Palestinians going hungry?
GIL SEDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
BALATA REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank - "We will never go hungry," Ahmad Zughayer boasted as a truck from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency unloaded sacks of flour, sugar, oil, rice and milk powder in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus.
As a U.S.-funded survey reports growing levels of malnutrition among the Palestinian population, Israelis and Palestinians have differed over just how severe the socioeconomic crisis is in the Palestinian areas, and who bears the blame.
Palestinians say Israeli security closures are intended to strangle the Palestinian economy and impose collective punishment. Israel says many innocent Palestinians are paying the price of their compatriots' belligerence and the Palestinian Authority's ineptitude and corruption.
Before the intifada, tens of thousands of Palestinians worked in Israel and maintained a decent standard of living.
For 20 years, Iyyad Maher, 45, also from the Balata camp, worked as a truck driver distributing dairy products in Israel. Since the intifada began in September 2000, he has been sitting at home, unemployed.
According to the World Bank, 35 percent of the Palestinian labor force is unemployed.
The obvious result is that family income has fallen sharply, and there is less money to buy basic commodities.
The preliminary results of the study conducted by Care International, carried out among 1,000 Palestinian households, showed that 9.3 percent of Palestinian children up to 5 years of age suffer from acute malnutrition.
The result was an accusing finger pointed at Israel, as the study's authors sought to tie the rise in malnutrition to Israeli-imposed restrictions on movement and the dismal economic situation in Palestinian areas, rather than to Palestinian violence or Palestinian Authority mismanagement.
Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, Israel's coordinator of government affairs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, admitted that the standard of living in the territories has dropped considerably, but denied categorically that the population was suffering from hunger.
The truth may be somewhere in the middle. There is no hunger because of a high level of mutual aid among the Palestinian population and the continued supply of food rations by UNRWA, and also because the Israeli army allows for the regular supply of food to the Palestinian territories.
To all appearances, the population here is not suffering from hunger.
Still, they could be suffering from malnutrition.
Indeed, the USAID study found that 36 percent of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza Strip do not have enough money to feed their families consistently.
Jacob Adler, a medical adviser to the Israeli military authorities in the West Bank and Gaza, admitted that "there is a certain problem of availability of food," but argued that malnutrition already had increased in the mid-1990's under Palestinian Authority management.
Not all Palestinians blame only Israel for the crisis.
A few weeks ago, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Gaza demanding that the Palestinian Authority supply "bread and work."
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