Middle East Desk Report
RAMALLAH: The Palestinian Authority (PA) said on Tuesday that the new U.S. Middle East peace plan, also known as the “Deal of the Century,” aims to establish an isolated Palestinian entity in the Gaza Strip.
“The deal calls for establishing an isolated entity in the Gaza Strip and imposes a full Israeli sovereignty on the West Bank,” the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in an emailed press statement.
The statement said that “the U.S. plan is not more than an Israeli idea with a new American dress that deals with the Palestinian cause as a population problem,” which needs economic relief.
“The American concept of resolving the Palestinian cause basically depends on economic peace that has been rejected by the Palestinian leadership many years ago,” said the statement.
Meanwhile, clashes broke out on Tuesday morning between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers east of Jabalia in northern Gaza Strip close to the borders with Israel, according to eyewitnesses. No injuries were reported.
The protests erupted after dozens of young men gathered near the fence of the borders with Israel to demonstrate against the Deal of the Century.
Meanwhile, Hamza Ferwana, 12 years old, from the Palestinian Gaza Strip, spends hours every day searching through trash piles at a municipal rubbish dump to earn a living from items he may find and sell.
“I am digging out rubbish in search of food or items that can be sold such as iron, aluminum, or plastic,” the little boy told Xinhua while working at a landfill site in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis.
Ferwana lives in the Khan Younis city’s Nahr al-Bared neighborhood, one of the poorest and most marginalized areas in the Israeli-blockaded seaside territory.
The neighborhood, which is bordered by a huge landfill from the south, and a cemetery from the east, is home to more than 100 families living at shabby houses made of tin sheets.
“We wait for garbage trucks so we can search for food between those piles, or collect metal tools to sell to feed my family,” Ferwana said, holding an empty flour bag.
The teen boy has been living, with his 10-member family, in a one-room house for 10 years after they were driven out of their home for being unable to pay the monthly rent.
Ferwana wished that he could go back to school and continue his education.
Not far from Ferwana’s house, Lina al-Barqoun, 22, was busy cooking food for her two children over wood fire.
Lina, who has been pregnant for eight months, described their living conditions as “tragic and non-human,” saying that one of her children suffers from chronic asthma, while the other child suffers from atrophy of foot muscles because of scorpion sting.
