The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said security procedures enforced at the Erez checkpoint out of Gaza today stopped Peter Hansen, UNRWA Commissioner-General and a UN Under-Secretary-General, from taking his senior management team to a meeting of the Agency’s directors in Amman, Jordan.

“These continuing restrictions are a clear violation of the international agreements to which Israel is a signatory,” Mr. Hansen said of the protest to the Israeli Government. “Furthermore, they fly in the face of the assurances made by the Government of Israel to ease the humanitarian plight of the Palestinians as a step in the roadmap to peace. Today’s events are unacceptable because they hamper the operations of the largest humanitarian organization working in the occupied Palestinian territory.”

The incident is the culmination of weeks of ever-tightening restrictions on the movement of UNRWA’s international personnel. Hundreds of man-hours have been lost at the Erez crossing in the last month, seriously impairing the Agency’s operations. At times, most of the Agency’s staff have been trapped either inside Gaza or inside Israel as a result of the closures – in violation of their freedom of movement under international law. All of this has taken place despite the fact that not one of UNRWA’s international staff has ever been found to be a security threat to Israel, the agency said.

Meanwhile, with more and more Palestinians dependent on international food aid, the head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) began a three-day on-site visit today to review first hand his agency’s efforts to help those impoverished by deteriorating security and economic conditions over the past two years.

"We are hopeful that the new efforts to bring about a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will improve the humanitarian conditions in the territories soon," WFP Executive Director James T. Morris said.

Palestinian unemployment now stands at 67 per cent and for the past 12 months, WFP was able to bring in nearly 45,000 tons of food to ensure the basic needs of nearly half a million people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The agency plans to extend its emergency operation after the current $18-million programme ends on 30 June.

For his part, the head of the UN labour agency said in a new report today that border closures remained a “dominant feature of daily life,” and the economic and social crisis in the occupied territories had deepened markedly over the last year, with rising unemployment and plummeting incomes leading to an “untenable” situation.

“The severe restrictions on movements of persons and goods within the occupied territories and between these and Israel have resulted in a dramatic decline in consumption, income and employment levels, and unprecedented contraction of economic activity, including output, trade and investment,” the Director-General of the International Labour Office (ILO), Juan Somavia, says in the report.

But the report also states that the economic and social situation “may have stabilized in the first half of 2003, albeit at a significantly lower level” than before the latest outbreak of sustained violence in September 2000.