 | For information on children (especially in Gaza) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories , giving to charities working in Gaza, donating money to disadvantaged children in Palestinian refugee camps then PalestineConnect can provide many insights. PalestineConnect is a registered charity that operates in the Gaza Strip. It provide free educational services to Palestinian children in the Gaza strip. It supports disadvantaged children and young adults in Gaza. If you want to donate something to Gaza, consider PalestineConnect. We also have a directory of NGOs in Gaza as well as a directory of charities that work in Gaza. PalestineConnect works in the Palestinian refugee camps of Bureij, Rafah and Maghazi. We help disadvantaged children in Gaza by providing them a safe environment in which to take free IT-related courses.
The situation in Gaza is much worse since Israel’s three week military intervention in the winter of 2008 - 2009. Charities such as our really need your support. |
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Extreme poverty (a 2008 UN appeal indicated that as many as four fifths of all Palestinians living in Gaza were dependent on welfare and food aid), combined with what may be one of the world’s highest unemployment rates, around two thirds of all working age individuals (according to the Gaza Chamber of Commercein mid-2009), leaves Palestinians in Gaza particularly disadvantaged. Families, especially those with young children, bear the brunt of this economic malaise.
With regard to the provision of educational services, according to recent UN data, UNRWA’s 23 school buildings in the Rafah refugee camp are ‘stretched well beyond capacity’, and in both of the camps, UNRWA schools are compelled to operate a ‘twin shift’ teaching rota. These institutions – which also suffered considerable structural damage and were closed for lengthy periods during and after Israel’s three-week military intervention that began on the 27th December 2008 – are in no position to provide the facilities, time, or space necessary for children to enjoy revision courses or recreational activities, let alone give them adequate time to use and learn from computers.
The needs of this cohort have notably increased in the last few years, not least as a result of Israel’s the aforementioned military intervention (for respected accounts of this event, consider those of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Oxfam and the UN Human Rights Council - see below for access to these and other reports).
Violence greatly exacerbates vulnerability, a 2009 study by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme for example, revealed that over 60 per cent of parents in Gaza regularly witnessed unusual behaviour (continuous crying, anxiety etc.) amongst their children and over four fifths reported that their children considered Gaza to be an ‘unsafe’ place in which to live.
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'Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' | source: United Nations | date: Sep. 2009
"...Statistics about Palestinians who lost their lives during the military operations vary. Based on extensive field research, non-governmental organizations place the overall number of persons killed between 1,387 and 1,417. The Gaza authorities report 1,444 fatalities. The Government of Israel provides a figure of 1,166. The data provided by non-governmental sources on the percentage of civilians among those killed are generally consistent and raise very serious concerns about the way Israel conducted the military operations in Gaza."
"...According to the Government of Israel, during the military operations there were four Israeli fatalities in southern Israel, of whom three were civilians and one a soldier. They were killed by rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian armed groups. In addition, nine Israeli soldiers were killed during the fighting inside the Gaza strip, four of whom as a result of friendly fire."
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‘White Flag Deaths: Killings of Palestinian Civilians during Operation Cast Lead’ | source: Human Rights Watch | date: Aug. 2009
"...In the early afternoon of January 7, 2009, four days after the start of Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza, Israeli tanks stopped at the house of Khalid ‘Abd Rabbo, who lives at the eastern end of al-Quds Street in Jabalya’s ‘Abd Rabbo neighborhood.9 According to three family members who witnessed the incident, an Israeli soldier fired on two women and three young girls who had come out of the house holding makeshift white flags. Two of the girls died; the grandmother and the third girl were wounded, the girl seriously."
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'UPDATED QUICK RESPONSE PLAN FOR GAZA: An Assessment of Needs Six Months After the War’ | source: UNRWA | date: Jul. 2009
"...Between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, Israel conducted a large scale military operation in Gaza, codenamed Operation Cast Lead. The most destructive military assault in Gaza’s history, it resulted in the death of over 1,400 Palestinians and more than 5,000 injuries and widespread destruction of public and private property, infrastructure and productive assets. Tens of thousands lost homes and livelihoods in the bombardment and subsequent ground force invasion. Thirteen Israelis were killed, including three civilians, and 518, including 182 civilians, were injured during the IDF operation."
"...The assault followed an 18-month blockade of Gaza’s borders which was imposed after the Hamas takeover of Gaza in mid-2007, and which was itself an extreme manifestation of a policy of access and movement restrictions that the Israeli Government has imposed upon Palestinians in the oPt since the early 1990s. The closures had crippled the private sector, leading to unprecedented levels of poverty and hardship amongst Gaza’s 1,500,000 residents, around two thirds of whom are refugees."
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'GAZA 1.5 million people trapped in despair' | source: International Committee of the Red Cross | date: June. 2009
"...The collapse of the Gaza economy has led to a dramatic increase in poverty. An ICRC household survey conducted in May 2008 showed that, even then, over 70 per cent of Gazans were living in poverty, with monthly incomes of less than 250 US dollars for a family of 7 to 9 members (1 dollar per household member per day, excluding the value of humanitarian assistance which they may receive)."
"...Six months after Israel launched its three-week military operation in Gaza on 27 December 2008, Gazans still cannot rebuild their lives. Most people struggle to make ends meet. Seriously ill patients face great difficulty obtaining the treatment they need. Many children suffer from deep psychological problems. Civilians whose homes and belongings were destroyed during the conflict are unable to recover."
"...Six months later, restrictions on imports are making it impossible for Gazans to rebuild their lives. The quantities of goods now entering Gaza fall well short of what is required to meet the population's needs. In May 2009, only 2,662 truckloads of goods entered Gaza from Israel, a decrease of almost 80 per cent compared to the 11,392 truckloads allowed in during April 2007."
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'Precisely Wrong: Gaza Civilians Killed by Israeli Drone-Launched Missiles' | source: Human Rights Watch | date: Jun. 2009
"...This report focuses on six Israeli drone strikes, which in total killed 29 civilians, eight of them children. It is based on interviews with victims and witnesses, investigations of the attack sites, IDF and media reports on the fighting, and in one case IDF video footage of the attack."
"...The total number of Gazan civilians killed by drone-launched missiles remains unclear. Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations - B’Tselem, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights - together reported 42 drone attacks that killed 87 civilians. Amnesty International told the media that it documented 48 civilian deaths from drones, and this does not represent the full number."
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'Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza' | source: Human Rights Watch | date: Mar. 2009
"...In the six cases documented in this report alone, which represent a selection of white phosphorus attacks in Gaza, white phosphorus shells, burning white phosphorus wedges, or the resulting fires killed 12 civilians, including three women and seven children, one of them a fifteen-monthold baby. Dozens were wounded by burns or smoke inhalation."
"...Ali al-Shamali, 46, who works as an attendant at the school and is also a volunteer with the local committee for displaced persons, said he saw a shell crash through the school roof and land in a classroom on the top floor. “Less than ten minutes later, another shell hit the school, and we rushed upstairs,” he said. “Then another three or four white phosphorus shells hit, and one hit the market next to the school.”40 The shell that hit the classroom immediately killed two young brothers and severely wounded their mother, al-Shamali said. The Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, based in Gaza City, identified the two children as Bilal al-Ashqar, 5, and Muhammad al-Ashqar, 4."
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'The conflict in Gaza: A briefing on applicable law, investigations, and accountability' | source: Amnesty International | date: Jan. 2009
"...In the first minutes of the bombing offensive, on 27 December 2008, seven students from a school run by the UN were killed outside the school, just after lessons finished as they were trying to get home. The attack came on a Saturday just as children finish school, after midday."
"...Of some 900 killed in the first 17 days, more than one third were civilians taking no direct part in hostilities, including more than 200 children. Israeli officials have denied deliberately targeting civilians, but they have launched attacks on civilians and civilian objects, including essential infrastructure, without a convincing explanation of why the objects they have attacked could be making an effective contribution to military action. Israeli forces have bombed buildings that serve no military purposes such as civilian government ministries and the parliament."
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'Gaza blockade: collective punishment' | source: Amnesty International | date: Jul. 2008
"...In the first five months of 2008 some 380 Palestinians, more than a third of them unarmed civilians and including more than 60 children, were killed by the Israeli army, almost all of them in the Gaza Strip. In the same period 25 Israelis, 16 of them civilians, were killed by Palestinian armed groups."
"...The fuel shortage has affected every aspect of life for Palestinians. Many patients and staff cannot reach hospitals, and universities had to close in mid-April as students and lecturers could no longer reach them.
In April, UNRWA had to suspend food distribution to 650,000 people for four days because of lack of fuel, and the WHO reported a 29 per cent drop in the number of visitors to outpatient departments because of lack of transport."
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'Razing Rafah: Mass Home Demolitions in the Gaza Strip' | source: Human Rights Watch | date: Oct. 2004
"...Over the past four years, the Israeli military has demolished over 2,500 Palestinian houses in the occupied Gaza Strip.3 Nearly two-thirds of these homes were in Rafah, a densely populated refugee camp and city at the southern end of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt. Sixteen thousand people – more than ten percent of Rafah’s population – have lost their homes, most of them refugees, many of whom were dispossessed for a second or third time."
"...According to the Rafah Municipality, the IDF destroyed 51.2 per cent of the city’s roads during the May incursions. In addition to the obvious problems this causes for traffic of commercial vehicles, health care workers, and others, the road demolitions caused severe destruction of civilian infrastructure, such as water, sewage, and the electrical grid, as pipes and wires were severed during the shredding of roads."
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PalestineConnect provides a series of community-led services and offers children a safe haven in which to relax and learn.
The IT-related courses are designed to support children in their education as well as enriching their social worlds and alleviating, in a small way, the already overburdened UNRWA educational infrastructures. |
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