Helping Children Caught in Escalating Middle East Crisis

[corpus christi]

http://www.savethechildren.org/news/releases/release_071706.asp?stationpub=i_hpln_071706&ArticleID=&NewsID=

Save the Children USA is moving quickly to respond to the immediate and urgent needs of children and families in the Middle East who have been displaced and affected by the recent escalating violence in the region. The organization, with decades of experience operating in the Middle East, is communicating closely with its staff in the region, and is working in partnership with United Nations agencies and local organizations to identify and meet the needs of children affected by this crisis.

As the conflict escalates, so does its effect on children and families caught in the crossfire. Thousands of children and families have fled their homes and are now living in schools and office buildings. Others are trapped in their homes without electricity and running water and are unable to meet basic food, medical and hygiene needs. The evolving crisis is putting hundreds of thousands of children at risk of serious injury, psychosocial distress and malnutrition, and is disrupting their daily routine.

Save the Children USA to date is focusing first on helping to meet the basic needs of children and families uprooted from their homes, including providing supplemental food, medicines, first aid kits, hygiene kits and sleeping materials, with a special focus on ensuring the safety and well-being of children. Drawing on decades of experience helping young children cope in conflict settings, Save the Children is setting up safe play areas at shelters located in schools to help children return to some sense of normalcy and routine. Save the Children is also providing educational and play materials for children to use in these safe play areas.

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http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/middle_east/06appeal/qandas.htm

What is Christian Aid doing to respond right now?
Christian Aid partner Mouvement Social is running a centre for internally displaced people in eastern Beirut but there are fears that the limited water supply will run out.

There is an urgent need for shelter, portable water, basic food supplies, medicines and infant milk for approximately 400,000 displaced people.

Living conditions in Palestinian refugee camps within Lebanon were dire before the crisis but have now worsened as daily supplies are no longer reaching them.

In Israel, where many people in northern towns are spending their days in bomb shelters, our Israeli partner organisations are closely monitoring the situation to see how needs can be met.

In the Gaza Strip, Christian Aid is providing water tanks to those living without clean water. Medical staff in the clinics we support are distributing whatever medicines they can spare. Stocks are running low due to border closures.

We are also helping our partner CFTA keep its children’s centres running as they provide counselling and art therapy for those affected by the conflict.

3. What’s needed in the long term?
Reconstruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure, roads, bridges and sources of power will require much investment and people will need help rebuilding their lives and finding appropriate sources of livelihood.

Unless they can trade and import goods freely, living conditions for people in the beleaguered Gaza Strip will continue to worsen.

Christian Aid, through its partners, works with people to help them find permanent solutions to their poverty. However, poverty and marginalisation will continue in the Middle East unless a solution is found that addresses the deep-rooted causes of the conflict.

[corpus christi]

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/press/releases/palestine190706.htm

Today, Oxfam partners and staff are witnessing and responding to the growing humanitarian crisis in the region. Oxfam estimates that over 40,000 people are displaced in Beirut alone. ICRC reports total displacements of 500,000 people in Lebanon. Over 200 people have been killed to date, most of whom are women and children. At the same time Israeli citizens are being subjected to rocket attacks which have killed 12 civilians and wounded many others.

While any state has the right to defend itself against armed attacks, Israel's destruction of civilian infrastructure including bridges, roads and the airport in Beirut is unacceptable. It has resulted in civilians being killed, has prevented them from fleeing conflict areas, and hinders humanitarian access. All parties to the conflict must recognise their obligations under the Geneva Conventions to distinguish between civilians and combatants and to refrain from attacks that harm the civilian population.

While attention has focused on the deteriorating situation in Lebanon and Israel, the world must not lose sight of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza which continues to intensify by the hour. More than 90 Palestinians have been killed and 240 wounded since the 28th of June. Most of Gaza is without a supply of mains electricity. Tens of thousands of families are struggling to survive without access to food, water and medical care due to Israeli military action and the continued closure of Gaza to the two-way traffic of goods and people.

Oxfam urges all parties to immediately cease hostilities in order to protect civilians and avoid an escalating crisis that could engulf the entire region.

[kagnew]

Cornerstone Church here in San Antonio, Texas, Rev. John Hagee said this past Sunday that he had received a call from someone in the Israeli government and was asked if the church could help financially to move children from the Northern parts of Israel to the middle for safety. Rev Hagee sent a check for $50,000.00. Rev Hagee is in Washington DC yesterday and today to talk with Congress and show support for Israel. He will talk at length about it this next Sunday. That should be one heck of a sermon. Think I will buy the audio tape so that I can have it for reference.

[corpus christi]

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=74104

The humanitarian crisis is quickly escalating in the South, where crucial medical and food supplies are running out quickly as Israeli air strikes have made it impossible to re-supply the embattled region, and in Beirut resources are strained from the influx of people fleeing Israeli bombardment in the South and southern suburbs.

The Health Ministry will distribute medicine to hospitals around Lebanon, starting with those caring for the highest number of wounded civilians, Health Minister Mohammad Khalifeh said at a news conference Wednesday. Over 850 civilians have been wounded so far.

"Hospital supplies in the South will last for a couple of days," told The Daily Star. "This is an ongoing disaster. In Beirut, we are losing our stocks of supplies and not replacing them." Doctors across Lebanon Wednesday said they were in need of crucial supplies like oxygen tanks and anaesthetics, but the situation is worst in the South, where many villages have been isolated.

"Without a safe corridor to bring food and medical supplies to the South, this problem is only going to grow larger," Abdel-Jaouad Mahjour, the World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Lebanon, told The Daily Star.

[4everHis]

War is ugly and the consequences for both side are equally bad.

How can we expect bombs to be falling and delivery trucks to be
running with supplies as well?

I am praying for everyone involved.
It certainly is not a clean operation, it is war.

[corpus christi]

http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=92816

Today's front page of the Vatican newspaper laments that the main victims of the Middle East conflict are children.

The Italian daily edition of L'Osservatore Romano states that "the children are suffering the harshest consequences of the conflict," and clarifies that the impact affects both very young Palestinians and Lebanese as well as very young Israelis.

L'Osservatore Romano bases its criticism on a study from the humanitarian organization "Save the Children," published on Tuesday. In Lebanon and Gaza, explains the report, children not only are direct victims of the violence (in some of the attacks, 50% of the dead and wounded have been children), but in addition they have to endure the ever greater lack of medicines, health care, food and water.

Also Israeli children of the areas subjected to bombings live in terrible conditions, adds the report. In Galilee, the population is spending whole days in small shelters because of the attacks launched by Hezbollah and Hamas.

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_060720abcs.shtml

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has written to the heads of churches in the Lebanon to express solidarity with them – and to issue a strongly-worded condemnation of the escalating violence in the Middle East...

He goes on: “My prayers and sympathy are with the principal victims, the innocent civilians on both sides of the border, who now live in terror and are powerless to prevent the collective suffering at the hands of Hezbollah and the Israeli military.”

Says Dr Williams: “The distress felt at the destruction not only of life but also the infrastructure so painstakingly rebuilt after years of conflict will, I know, be acute and reinforce the sense of helplessness at being caught up in a wider regional struggle. My condemnation of this resort to violence is unequivocal.”