GAZA CITY — A
UN official in war-battered
Gaza Sunday
called for a "genuine political process" to avert further bloodshed,
after the military conflict between Israel and Islamist group Hamas that
ravaged the Palestinian enclave.
اضافة اعلان
As thousands of Gazans slowly tried to piece back together
their lives, top UN staff visited the territory after an Egyptian-brokered
ceasefire Friday halted 11 days of mutual bombardment.
On Sunday, in a badly-damaged district of Gaza city,
volunteers swept up clouds of dust at the feet of collapsed buildings, while
others shoveled debris onto the back of a donkey-drawn cart.
Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip since May 10 have
killed more than 200 Palestinians, rendered thousands homeless and laid waste
to buildings and key infrastructure across the blockaded territory.
It was the latest such bombardment to hit the crowded
coastal strip of some 2 million people, after three previous wars with Israel
since 2008.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Palestinian refugee
agency UNRWA, said the reconstruction needed to go hand in hand with efforts to
create "a different political environment."
"We need to have a genuine focus on human
development," on proper access to education, jobs and livelihoods, he
said.
"But this needs to be accompanied by a genuine
political process".
Speaking earlier to a group of
journalists, he said "the layers of hardship in Gaza keep getting
thicker", because the root causes of the conflict have not been addressed.
'No pause to breathe'
US Secretary of State Antony
Blinken, speaking ahead of an imminent trip to the region, reaffirmed
Washington's support for a two-state solution so Israelis and Palestinians can
live "with equal measures of security, of peace and dignity".
Israeli strikes on Gaza killed 248
Palestinians, including 66 children, and have wounded over 1,900 people,
the Gaza health ministry says.
Rockets from Gaza claimed 12 lives
in Israel, including one child and an Arab-Israeli teenager, an Israeli
soldier, one Indian, and two Thai nationals, medics say. Some 357 people in
Israel have been wounded.
There is controversy about how many
of those killed in Gaza were combatants, and how many were civilians. Israel's
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the bombing campaign had killed
"more than 200 terrorists" in Gaza.
Lynn Hastings, of the UN aid agency
OCHA, said the intense bombing had devastated people's mental health.
During the last war in 2014,
"we had humanitarian pauses, where people were able to get out," she
said.
"That really speaks to the
amount of trauma that was experienced this time, where there was absolutely no
pause for people to breathe.
"The comments that I have heard
are not 'I need access to water' — even though there are 800,000 people who
don't have access to clean water right now — but about the impacts on their
lives overall and how they are ever going to recover from this," she said.
'Here is my home'
Sitting drinking coffee under an
olive tree near his destroyed house in Gaza, Abou Yahya was furious.
"If I had 50 sons, I would tell
them to go and fight Israel," he said.
An Israeli air strike hit his home
last week, reducing it to rubble, and he has vowed to sleep on top of the
debris.
"My family has asked me to
leave it, not to sleep here, but I won't budge," he said. "Here is my
home".
Authorities have begun distributing
tents and mattresses in the Gaza Strip, as the UN said at least 6,000 people
had been made homeless by the bombardment.
Lorries bringing much-needed
medicine, food and fuel entered Gaza Friday through the Kerem Shalom crossing
after Israel reopened it.
Peace talks have stalled since 2014,
including over the status of occupied east Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in
the occupied West Bank.
The latest military escalation
started after violent clashes in occupied Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram
Al-Sharif, Islam's third holiest site, which is also revered by Jews as the
Temple Mount.
Israeli forces had moved in on
Palestinian worshippers at the site, toward the end of the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan.
They had also sought to quell
protests against the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in the occupied
East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, to make way for Jewish settlers.
The clashes prompted Hamas to launch
rockets from Gaza towards Israel on May 10, and Israel responded with air
strikes.
On Sunday, Jewish visitors entered
the Al-Aqsa compound for the first time in about three weeks.
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