The Monthly Humanitarian Bulletin | January 2015

This month Gaza was affected by a winter storm that swept the oPt between 6 to 10 January. The Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza reported the death of two infants (aged two and four months of age) from Khan Younis. Another two deaths were reported by the local media, including a fisherman who died while fishing near the shore. Approximately nine people were injured as a result of water tanks falling from rooftops or due to the use of unsafe heating sources or electricity-related incidents.

During January, Israeli settlers reportedly uprooted or vandalized around 5,600 trees in seven incidents across the West Bank. This number is almost 60 per cent of all trees uprooted or vandalized in the whole of 2014. The olive oil industry constitutes 25 per cent of the agricultural income of the oPt and estimates suggest that about 100,000 families depend to some extent on the annual olive harvest for their livelihoods.

The 2015 Strategic Response Plan (SRP) represents the humanitarian community’s coordinated plan to respond to the most urgent humanitarian needs in the oPt. Following its global launch in Geneva in December 2014, the SRP was presented locally (in Ramallah) on 12 February by the Deputy Prime Minister of the State of Palestine and the Humanitarian Coordinator and presented to diplomats, the media, UN agencies, and national and international NGOs.

The summer hostilities resulted in one of the largest waves of internal displacement in the Gaza Strip, with approximately 100,000 people still displaced. The ability of humanitarian actors to respond to emerging needs has been hampered by major gaps in the registration and profiling of IDPs (internally displaced persons). These activities are critical to establishing the location of IDPs, and subsequently their living conditions, vulnerabilities and specific needs, as well as to assess the impact on host communities.

A number of initiatives are ongoing to pursue accountability for alleged violations of international law during the escalation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel in July and August 2014. Meaningful accountability for alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law is key to ending the repeated cycle of hostilities and violations, following three escalations in six years in Gaza and increasing violence in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Accountability is needed both to ensure justice for victims of violations, and to prevent future violations.

This month’s Humanitarian Bulletin focuses again on the deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip. The longstanding economic crisis in Gaza was further exacerbated in January by Israel’s decision to freeze the transfer of tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in retaliation for the Palestinian accession to the International Criminal Court. As a result, some 70,000 civil servants on the PA payroll only received a proportion of their December 2014 salaries, while the fate of January 2015 salaries is currently unclear. This exacerbates the ongoing problem of another 40,000 civil servants and security personnel recruited by the Hamas authorities who have received no salary since April 2014, except for a one-off humanitarian payment in September 2014.

The fragile humanitarian situation prevailing in the Gaza Strip following the summer 2014 hostilities and the longstanding blockade, deteriorated further during the month.