After his fourth visit to the Gaza Strip: the Commissioner-General of UNRWA warns about the future of the residents of Gaza

The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) warned on Wednesday of the bleak future awaiting the residents of the Gaza Strip after the end of the Israeli war.

Philippe Lazzarini, who returned yesterday, Tuesday, from his fourth visit to the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the war on October 7, said that many residents are no longer able to anticipate "the future in the Gaza Strip."

Lazzarini told reporters in Jerusalem, "We have hundreds of thousands of people now living on the street, living in these temporary plastic (tents) and sleeping on the ground."

About 1.9 million people in the Gaza Strip, with a population of 2.4 million, were forced to leave their homes and become displaced as a result of bombing and military operations, according to the United Nations.

Lazzarini said that more than 60% of the buildings were damaged. The Israeli bombing affected large areas of the northern Gaza Strip, and photos from Agence France-Presse show large numbers of residential buildings that were reduced to rubble.

"For us, there is a humanitarian catastrophe in the north," Lazzarini said. He asked, "Do you encourage anyone to go to the north when we know that it is full of unexploded ordnance and rubble and where there are no services?"

He added, "When we talk about the next day, it may not be the day when the fighting in the military operation stops. They (the residents of the Gaza Strip) realized that it would be far away."

"I fear that we now have an entire lost generation of children," Lazzarini said, noting that children live in "extremely harsh" conditions and suffer from profound psychological trauma.

Lazzarini added, "This should make us all worry if we are talking about peace, security and coexistence in the future. The longer we wait, the greater the risk in the future."

According to the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, “When we talk about rebuilding Gaza, the matter is no longer the same as it was before, when we had to rehabilitate some housing and that was still possible.”

He added, "I do not see any country engaging in a meaningful way in the absence of a solid and appropriate political project and road map That is why we need countries to trust this road map."

The Palestinian Prisoners' Club warned that the Israeli occupation would continue to carry out the crime of enforced disappearance against Gaza detainees.

This came in response to the approval of the General Assembly of the Israeli Knesset to extend the validity of the regulations that prevent Gaza detainees from meeting with a lawyer, for an additional period of four months.

The Prisoner's Club said in a statement today, Wednesday, that the occupation aims, through this step, to carry out more crimes against Gaza detainees without any effective oversight, and to use these regulations as a cover for the ongoing crimes against them, as the crime of enforced disappearance is considered one of the most serious crimes occurring against them today. , which comes within the framework of the comprehensive aggression and genocide against Gaza.

He added that every day that passes since detainees are denied access to a lawyer, and the occupation insists on concealing data related to their fate, their places of detention, and their health condition, the horrific and horrifying testimonies carried by those who were released will increase, and these testimonies include acts of torture, abuse, starvation, humiliation, and detention in poor conditions. It violated human dignity, affecting young men, women, children and the elderly.

He pointed out that despite the calls made to many international and specialized institutions, from bodies with jurisdiction over detainees, in order to obtain any clear information regarding the Gaza detainees, they did not lead to any results that could reassure their families, while emphasizing that we are talking About different categories of them.

The prisoner institutions, in several previous statements, referred to data carried by the detainees who were released from “Ofer” prison. They were detained from sections close to the sections of Gaza’s detainees, which reflects a high level of torture to which they are subjected, in addition to testimonies given by the detainees. In front of the media in Gaza, in addition to the occupation’s admission of the execution of one of the detainees and what the occupation media revealed about the martyrdom of a group of detainees in the “Sde Teman” camp in Beersheba, in addition to the martyrdom of two Gaza workers, the identity of one of whom was revealed.

It is worth mentioning that the last data disclosed by the occupation prison administration is the presence of (661) detainees from Gaza, under the classification of what the occupation calls (illegitimate combatants), in addition to what the institutions were able to obtain, such as the number of female detainees from Gaza in the “Damoun” prison, which Their number as of the last data reached more than (50) female detainees, noting that (8) of them were released from Gaza recently.

The Prisoner's Club renewed its call to international human rights organizations at various levels, to review the essence of their role, which they did not play throughout the period of aggression against the detainees, and to intervene urgently and immediately to complete visits to them and to seek to pressure the occupation to reveal the fate of Gaza detainees, and to put an end to the crime of enforced disappearance.