Nov 13, 10:53 AM EST
By BEN HUBBARD Associated Press Writer
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- A United Nations flour warehouse in Gaza that was full early last week now stands empty - the guttural sounds of trucks replaced by the chirping of pigeons in the rafters.
Another warehouse holds just a few crates of lunch meat and space usually filled with oil and powdered milk is taken up by air conditioners for medical centers yet to be built.
Israel has kept its borders with Gaza shut for nine days in response to Palestinian rocket and mortar fire. On Thursday, the U.N. warned its stocks had run so low that it would not be able to make its next delivery of food to 750,000 needy Gazans on Saturday.
"We've been working here from hand to mouth for quite a long time, so these interruptions on the crossing points affect us immediately," said John Ging, director of U.N. Relief and Works Agency operations in Gaza.
Israel's Defense Ministry had said it would allow 30 truckloads of humanitarian supplies into Gaza on Thursday. But the crossings remained shut because militants fired rockets and mortars into Israel earlier in the day, Israeli security officials said.
The crisis is only the latest since Islamic militants from Hamas overran the Gaza Strip last year. Hamas and Israel are bitter enemies. Hamas does not recognize a place for a Jewish state in an Islamic Middle East and has sent dozens of suicide bombers into Israel, which in turn labels Hamas a terror group.
To pressure Hamas, Israel imposed a blockade, allowing only minimal humanitarian supplies and an occasional trickle of commercial goods. All but one of Gaza's crossings are into Israel. The exception is Rafah, which leads to Egypt but Egypt is also enforcing a blockade.
Among the items UNRWA has not been able to get into Gaza are fire extinguishers for its facilities, tires for its vehicles, toner for the photocopiers in its schools and clinics and materials for a blind children's center, said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness.
"These children are effectively being punished as a group, and it's hard to see why they should be punished for a small group of people firing rockets," Gunness said.
More than half of Gaza residents are refugees and their descendants from the 1948-49 war over Israel's creation and many still live in squalid shantytowns.
The Israeli blockade has plunged the crowded territory even further into poverty, while keeping construction materials out and Gazans locked in. About 80 percent of Gaza's 1.4 million residents depend on food aid, according to U.N. figures.
No decision had yet been made about when to reopen the crossings but the government was considering the U.N.'s position, Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner said.
However, "If Hamas continues firing rockets into Israel, it impedes our ability to open the crossings," he said.
The U.N.'s Ging said vulnerable Gazans shouldn't be held hostage to the actions of militants.
"International law, which regulates all these issues even during conflict, requires that civilian populations have access to the goods and services that they need to survive," he said.
Besides providing food aid in Gaza, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency runs more than 220 schools and provides health care to more than 1 million Palestinians.
The U.N. distributes food aid to Gazans in cycles. Families are categorized by size and each group has a window every two or three months when it can pick up its food.
When the U.N. is forced to stop distribution, the tens of thousands of people eligible to get their food during that period will get nothing, said U.N. officials. This will delay the cycle, meaning that all food recipients will have to wait longer for their next installment.
"If there's nothing there it will be a disaster for people here," said Adil Adwalla, 35, pointing to the distribution center in the Shati refugee camp, where he lives. He can't find work as a construction worker because the blockade has make building materials scare, he said. That makes the food aid even more important to his wife and six children, he said.
"Most people here depend on the aid," he said. "If the crossing are closed where else can get we food?"
