Saudi Arabia approves additional $1M to support humanitarian operations in Palestine

Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz approved on Sunday additional aid worth £1 million to support humanitarian operations in occupied Palestine.

The Saudi official news agency reported that the additional funding, which includes food aid, came in response to a proposal by the World Food Programme that targets 81,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The funding will be provided by the Saudi Committee for the Relief of the Palestinian people and followed up by the Kingdom’s representatives at the World Food Programme.

The Palestinians living in the Jordan Valley, in the eastern part of the occupied West Bank, suffer from extreme living conditions as the Israeli authorities frequently demolish their homes and displace them, often under the pretext of using their lands as military zones. Meanwhile, Israel has been confiscating and demolishing the homes of Palestinians who live near the separation wall since 2002 and the residents of Palestinian refugee camps are living in unhealthy homes that do not meet international standards.

Anadolu news agency quoted the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, as saying last Tuesday that the Saudi king was ordering “the allocation of 300 million Saudi riyals ($80 million) to the Palestinian Health Ministry and the Palestinian Red Crescent in order to help them cope with the emergency services and lack of medicines and medical supplies resulting from the latest Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.”

Al-Faisal added: “The Saudi Fund for Development continues to oversee the Kingdom’s commitment to Gaza’s reconstruction programme. The Fund, in coordination with other donors, will provide approximately $500 million in total to finance the reconstruction of facilities and houses affected by Israel’s brutal aggression.”

Egypt is hosting a new round of indirect talks on Monday between Israel and the Palestinian factions in the hope of reaching an agreement on a permanent ceasefire. So far, the talks have not succeeded in reaching a permanent agreement that would put an end to the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, but a truce between the two sides has been extended for a third time, allowing them to negotiate over the demands of the two delegations.

Last Wednesday, a day after the $80 million aid for Gaza was promised, Saudi Arabia also announced that it would be donating $100 million to a UN centre established “to coordinate and assist international counterterrorism efforts”. The Kingdom provided the initial funding to establish the centre in 2011.