The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) hailed Türkiye's role as an important partner of the global agency, in terms of delivering aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Director of UNRWA Affairs Thomas White explained that the Gaza Strip "is hardly livable due to the difficult economic and humanitarian conditions."
He said his agency entered the new year with financial commitments estimated at about $80 million.
According to the Geneva-based nongovernmental organiation (NGO9 Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, about 1.5 million out of 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip live in poverty due to the Israeli blockade and restrictions imposed since 2006.
Benefiting from a shared history with the Palestinians, Türkiye maintains good ties both with the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah and authorities in Hamas-led Gaza.
Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has suffered a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade that has deprived the enclave's roughly 1.9 million inhabitants of their most basic needs, especially food, fuel, medicine and construction supplies. The Gaza Strip largely depends on foreign aid as the economy has stalled under the Israeli blockade, and apart from small industries, industrialization is almost nonexistent.
Apart from food packages, clothing and medical equipment, Türkiye also offers more permanent solutions to THE Palestinians' problems, such as building hospitals and setting up olive oil plants for farmers. A hospital built by Turkish development aid agency, the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), will be one of the biggest in the region and is scheduled to open later this year in the Gaza Strip, where hundreds were injured in the 2014 Israeli airstrikes. The aid agency also seeks to accommodate Palestinians who lost their homes in the Israeli airstrikes. A total of 320 apartment flats under construction, which will cost some $13 million, will be handed over to families soon. Housing units are being built in an area of 20,000 square meters (around 215,280 square feet) in a Gaza village.
