July 4, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 22,1423

TEL AVIV, July 3: International relief agencies on Wednesday accused Israel of hindering the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians to the point where they can “no longer adequately” do their job.

Thirty-two relief agencies — including CARE International, Oxfam and Medecins du Monde — demanded Israel provide access to aid workers and allow relief to reach people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The groups, members of the Association of International Development Agencies, also asked the world community to “put pressure on the Israeli government to ensure humanitarian access is unrestricted as guaranteed under international law.

“On a daily basis we are subjected to excessive delays at military checkpoints, inconsistent and sometimes complete refusal of access to our project sites and beneficiaries, and harassment and severe restrictions on the movements of local as well as international staff,” they said in a statement.

“As a result humanitarian agencies are now often unable to reach the civilian populations in need of basic assistance, and our capacity to provide sustained and quality support has been severely undermined,” it said.

In signing the statement, the groups said they had “now reached a point where we can no longer adequately fulfill our mandates.”

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s spokesman Ranaan Gissin said on Monday that Israel was in contact with aid agencies and donor countries to ensure relief reaches the Palestinians via Israeli checkpoints rather than through Yasser Arafat’s “corrupt” authority.

He did not name the agencies and countries contacted.

CURFEW RELAXED: Nablus turned from a ghost town into a bustling hub on Wednesday as the Israeli army lifted daytime curfews on several cities and promised to ease its grip across the reoccupied West Bank.

It was a dramatic shift from the previous four days, when it was hard to find even a stray cat in this city of 180,000 people built on rocky hillsides, but Palestinians despaired about the future.

“There’s no hope. It’s hard living like this. Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow,” said Ali Atmawi, who owns a shoe store opposite the city’s clock tower and main fruit and vegetable market.

Atmawi, who said people had so little money they could buy only necessities like food, shrugged when a visiting merchant reported hearing that Israel was planning to ease restrictions, including curfews.

As part of efforts to ease the grip since it started to reoccupy West Bank towns on June 19, the Israeli security cabinet decided to lift curfews on Wednesday and allow 5,000 Palestinians to return to work in the Jewish state.

The army announced a lifting of its strict curfew for most of the day in the towns of Al Khalil, Nablus, Ramallah and Jenin to allow the local population to restock their supplies. The curfew in Bethlehem was also raised later.

Hundreds from surrounding villages angrily waited at sun-baked Israeli checkpoints to enter Nablus and other cities to join the mobs of people trying to cram in shopping and other errands in a few hours of freedom.

But even then they could not buy everything they needed or wanted, while merchants complained business was bad despite the crowds.—AFP