Mission Report, Palestine, May 2016

The situation in the occupied Palestinian terrorities (oPt) is defined as a protracted protection crisis with humanitarian consequences, drive by lack of compliance with international law on the part of the Occupying Power and is now approaching its 50^th year[1]. To date, Palestinians continue to face a range of serious protection threats, including destruction or damage of homes, forcible transfer, restrictions on freedom of movement and access to basic services to maintain an adequate standard of living. These issues are only further exacerbated by violence and hostile escalations in both Gaza and the West Bank[2].

In Gaza, the eight-year blockade and three escalations of hostilities in six years has devastated public infrastructure, which coupled with a significant power deficit disrupts the proper functioning of basic services which further exacerbates vulnerable living conditions amongst the population. The blockage and periodic hostilities have inflicted large scale destruction to Gaza’s economy, productive assets and infrastructure. The Israeli-imposed ‘dual use’ restrictions on the entry of equipment and spare parts have impeded basic service delivery, particularly to the WASH and Shelter sectors. This coupled with constant and daily power outages, reaching 12 to 16 hours per day, further impairs already desperately failing service delivery of essential water and wastewater facilities[3]. Shelters needs are further compounded by the chronic housing shortage, estimated at over 75,000 units, even before the high rate of destruction of shelters during the 2014 escalation. This is all further compounded by restrictions of Palestinians from Gaza, in addition to the closure of the Rafah passenger crossing in October 2014, which has left 1.8 million Palestinians able to move in or out[1].

[1]OCHA (2015). Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) for OPT

[2]NRC-NO (2015). ECHO funded action, 2015/01276/RQ/01/02

[3]Water deficit is estimated at 80 to 100 million m³ per year in 2014 (190 million m³ abstracted as compared to 55 million m³available), significant groundwater depressions and saltwater intrusions, high rates of water contamination with 90 million litres of raw oruntreated wastewater discharged to the Mediterranean sea daily, resulting in only 3.6% of available wells in Gaza meeting WHO standardsfor salinity and nitrates (Oxfam 2016)