UN urges huge aid increase for Palestinians

JERUSALEM - The UN has called for an 80 per cent increase in aid for Palestinians to cope with the impact of the international and Israeli boycott of their Hamas-led Government.

The revision to US$385 million ($608 million) in required funding follows a report which predicts 70 per cent of Palestinians will be without paid work by the end of the year.

The job situation stems from the ban on paying salaries to the Palestinian Authority's 152,000 employees and the continued contraction of the economy because of closures and the loss of work in Israel.

Filippo Grandi, the deputy director of the UN Relief and Works Agency, said 100,000 people in Gaza were on a waiting list for places on the agency's short-term job creation schemes. The programme provides refugees with 15-20,000 three or six-month job placements.

The report also warns that a "rise in criminality and lawlessness" due to economic pressure "will undermine private investment."

Alvaro de Soto, the UN's peace envoy, said the details of the emergency funding mechanism agreed by the US and European countries in New York last month had not yet been worked out. "The target is to get it working by early July," he said.

- INDEPENDENT