An Update

Credit: Joel Carillet/iStock

~ from an article published on The United Church of Canada’s website on November 16, 2023

Even as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza effectively blocks all non-governmental aid from entering, United Church support is reaching partners who are responding to the most urgent needs in the region.

“People are anxious, fearful, traumatized, and feel isolated,” said Zoughbi Zoughbi, Director of Wi’am: The Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center, when he spoke to United Church Global Partnership staff this week. “Power cuts and cuts to outside sources of information is happening frequently, IDF soldiers are conducting daily multiple raids into Bethlehem and West Bank with some interactions resulting in violence and/or death. Schoolchildren are trapped until late in the evening with no food or water and are only able to go home after the soldiers leave. Rocket shell remnants from the Iron Dome have landed on Wi’am centre property.”

United Church partners are responding in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, where community needs are immense. To date, we have donated:

1. $50,000 from the United Church’s Global Emergency Response Fund to ACT Alliance; funds were directed to the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees, a Mission and Service partner.
2. $20,000 from Humanitarian Crisis Appeal funds to the East Jerusalem YMCA, supporting some 1,400 of the most vulnerable, including providing food baskets to 200 families, and hygiene kits and medical supplies for another 200 families.
3. $15,000 from Humanitarian Crisis Appeal funds to Mission and Service partner, Wi’am, which is located in Bethlehem. Wi’am will provide individual and group psychosocial support to the most vulnerable, and temporary work for those who have lost their livelihoods because of Israeli-imposed movement restrictions and the near-economic collapse of the region.

Your support makes a difference. To date, 220 letters have been sent to MPs, including two in French; 395 online donors have donated about $69,000 in English, and about $1000 in French, largely from one donor. Please, continue to pray, act, and give:

• PRAY for peace and justice in the Middle East.
• ADVOCATE by sending a letter to your MP, using our new advocacy tool.
• DONATE to our Mission and Service partners who are currently responding to those impacted by the conflict in West Bank and East Jerusalem.

For more information about how you could respond, see the Humanitarian Crisis the Middle East post on The United Church of Canada’s website.