UN: Poverty worsening in Gaza

Conditions for Palestinians living in Gaza have deteriorated to unprecedented levels, according to a report by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Aid granted to Gaza has failed to stop more than half of the population in the territory from sliding below the poverty line, UNRWA said on Thursday.

"The number of households in Gaza below the consumption poverty line [has] continued to grow, reaching 51.8 per cent in 2007 despite significant amounts of emergency and humanitarian assistance," the report said.

But the agency said that conditions have improved in the occupied West Bank, where the poverty level in 2007 dropped by nearly five per cent from the previous year, to 19.1 per cent.

Unemployment concerns

The lifting of an international embargo on the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank was likely to have been the catalyst towards an improvement in conditions there, UNRWA said.

But although Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, it has maintained an economic and security blockade on the territory.

Israel says the restrictions are an attempt to restrict Hamas, which has control of Gaza, but human-rights groups say the blockade amounts to the collective punishment of Palestinian civilians.