Border closure stops construction in Gaza

U.N. projects wait while Israel lets in only essential goods

The Associated Press

Border closure stops construction in Gaza — Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10 July 2007 — Richmond Times-Dispatch · Richmond, Virginia · 10 July 2007

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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The United Nations yesterday suspended construction of homes, schools and an emergency sewage system in the Gaza Strip, blaming a shortage of building materials resulting from Israel’s closure.

The move, which threatens the jobs of 121,000 Palestinians, is the latest hardship facing the poverty-stricken territory buffeted by infighting, ruled by Islamic militants and tightly controlled by Israel. John Ging, director of the U.N.

Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, said many houses in refugee camps were damaged during months of clashes between Hamas and rival Fatah forces and his agency lacks repair supplies. He said school repairs and construction also have fallen behind schedule, leaving children without classrooms.

“Some $93 million worth of projects are on hold because cement and other building supplies have run out,” Ging said. In the southern town of Rafah, the concrete skeletons of dozens of partly finished houses rise from the sand, part of a refugee camp hard hit by Israeli military operations before 2005 and later Palestinian infighting.

Construction has been halted, forcing dozens of destitute families to crowd in with relatives. About 1.4 million people are jammed into Gaza, a territory 25 miles long and six miles wide with no natural resources. It is hemmed in on two sides by Israel, one side by the Egyptian Sinai desert and the last by the Mediterranean Sea.

Ging said the shortage of building materials was the result of severely limited imports through crossings between Gaza and Israel. Since Hamas defeated Fatah forces and took control of Gaza last month, Israel has shut the crossings except for humanitarian assistance, citing security threats.

Shlomo Dror, spokesman for the Israeli army unit that deals with Gaza issues, said some cement is being let in along with the emergency supplies, and other building materials would be added to the next shipment.

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Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead or date line, so its date and newspaper rest on the record it arrived with, not on anything visible in the scan.

Context added by this archive

Date check: No masthead, folio or printed date appears on this clipping — the trim begins at the headline. Nothing on it names the newspaper.

The lead says the U.N. acted “yesterday” and the story places the Hamas takeover of Gaza “last month”, which is consistent with a July 2007 paper, but neither 2007-07-10 nor pub “Richmond Times-Dispatch” could be checked against the page.

Cite this clipping

"Border closure stops construction in Gaza," Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10 July 2007. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2007-017. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2007-017