Gaza faces aid catastrophe

Published on Wednesday 7 January 2009 20:57

We write, as heads of some of Scotland's leading humanitarian aid agencies, to express our deep concern about the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Increasing numbers of innocent civilians, including some aid workers have been killed and wounded. There are severe shortages of food, medicines and fuel. The UN estimates that 250,000 people have no access to running water. Unless conditions improve, people will run out of fuel within a few days. After that most wells will stop working.

The breakdown in the sewage network poses a grave risk to people's health because of the spread of water-borne diseases. Sewage is flooding Beit Lahiya, farmland, and the sea, after five of Gaza's waste water pumping stations shut down due to lack of electricity.

Aid workers face grave personal danger and there is a lack of humanitarian access to allow agencies to respond to the crisis. Aid has largely been prevented from entering Gaza and people are afraid to leave their homes to access what little is available.

We urge the UN and the UK government to demand an immediate end to the violence and for urgent access to be made possible for humanitarian agencies.

JUDITH ROBERTSON Oxfam Scotland; HABIB MALIK Islamic Relief; GAVIN MCLELLAN Christian Aid Scotland; PAUL CHITNIS SCIAF; MERVYN LEE Mercy Corps; DOUGLAS HAMILTON Save the Children in Scotland

Thousands have been forced to leave their homes and more than 400 people have been killed, most if not all of them civilians.

Another letter about Gaza? No. This was an outrage in Africa that has been reported little – the slaughter since Christmas of some 400 people in the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo by the rebel Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army.

Of course, Africa is distant, difficult and uncomfortable. Reporting from Palestine and Israel is easy – a willing and eager propaganda machine with countless staged deceptions on the one hand and an open and articulate democracy on the other.

(DR) GRAEME D EDDIE

Bothwell Gardens

Dunbar, East Lothian

Dr Janet Powney (Letters, 6 January) demonstrates a rather bizarre logic in attempting to justify Hamas rocket attacks on Israel as being in defence of Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel has shown considerable restraint in the face of years of terrorist attacks, whether by suicide bombings or rockets emanating from Gaza. The "relatively few poorly aimed rockets" to which she refers actually number in the thousands, and for years these have blighted the lives of those in southern Israel, Arab or Israeli. Although relatively few of these rockets, (which can carry 10kg or more of explosives) have caused injuries or fatalities, the terrorist threat is in the fear and uncertainty they create. Faced with an increase in the number and range of such munitions, Israel was totally justified in its response, one most other countries would have followed had their own citizens been placed in similar danger.

BILL GOODALL

Baird Terrace

Edinburgh