Israel Matzav

IDF hits back at UNRWA claim that Gaza 'blockade' harming 'Palestinian' education

The IDF's Civil Affairs Department in the Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has prepared a report responding to charges by UNRWA that Israel's Gaza 'blockade' is harming 'Palestinian' education.

The COGAT report, obtained exclusively on Thursday by The Jerusalem Post, was prompted by a report published in mid-May by Kishore Singh, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, in which it cited a claim by UNRWA that “a minimum of 100 new schools are required in order to meet the enrollment demands of the refugee children of Gaza and to return its schools to a single-shift system.”

In addition, Singh’s report cites another UNRWA claim that it had only received approval to build eight new schools in the Gaza Strip. The UN report blames Israel’s so-called blockade, imposed in 2007 and later eased up significantly following the Turkish flotilla last summer, as the cause for the difficult education system in Gaza.

The COGAT report, which a senior Foreign Ministry officials told the Post on Thursday would be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council – refutes both claims. Firstly it says that UNRWA has never provided the IDF with a list of 100 schools that it would like to build in the Gaza Strip.

According to the Israeli report, head of COGAT Maj.- Gen. Eitan Dangot met months ago with UNRWA and a representative of the UN Secretary General at his own initiative and asked to work jointly on a broad education plan for the Gaza Strip.

The COGAT report claims that Israel heard the claim regarding the schools for the first time from the media and that an official and detailed request was never received.

“The attempt to draw a connection between UNRWA’s difficulty in building 100 new schools and the blockade is misleading and distortive, and makes connections that have nothing to do with each other,” says the report.

According to official COGAT records obtained by the Post since the change in Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Gaza blockade in June, 2010, Israel has approved a total of 41 educational projects, 32 of them for UNRWA. Twentyfour of the 32 approved UNRWA projects were for new schools and another three approvals were granted for the expansion of existing schools According to the report, UNRWA has only begun bringing in building supplies for 11 of the schools, even though it has approval to do so for another 13.

The report provides a detailed list of the schools approved, with a breakdown of which ones are under construction and which ones are not.

By the way, the report also says that unemployment among the 'refugee population' has increased while unemployment among the 'non-refugee population' has dropped. I wonder why. Maybe they need a Wisconsin plan to get them off welfare. Heh.

Labels: COGAT, Gaza plenty, UNRWA

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:23 PM