The last 10 days have seen one of the most intense periods of destruction
by the Israeli military in Gaza since the start of the Intifada, with more than 100 homes flattened and 1,100 people
left homeless, the main United Nations agency helping Palestinian refugees has said.
According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA),
the Israeli military has demolished or damaged beyond repair 131 residential buildings since the start of May, bringing to
17,594 the total number of people who have lost their homes in Gaza.
The majority of the demolitions have taken place in Rafah in the south, where
11,215 people have already been made homeless by demolitions since the beginning of the current strife in September 2000,
and in the region of the Kissufim Road, where a Palestinian
attack on 2 May left an Israeli mother and her four children dead.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen said the Agency condemned "without
reservation the 2 May killings, as it does the killing of innocent Palestinians and their children, as international law simply
forbids collective punishment."
"The overwhelming majority of the more than 17,000 Palestinians who have lost
their homes in Gaza since the start of the intifada have been
guilty of nothing more than living in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.
UNRWA, the largest humanitarian operation
in the occupied Palestinian territory, has been providing those who have lost their homes with water, food, blankets and cash
assistance. With funding from donors, the Agency has been able to build new shelters in safe places for several hundred of
the homeless families, but its resources are unable to meet the growing humanitarian crisis faced by those without shelter.
