Saudi Arabia pledges 71 million for Gaza housing

The UNRWA office in Geneva announced on Friday that Saudi Arabia through the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) will finance refugee housing in Rafah, Gaza, to the tune of USD 71.5 million. An agreement to this effect has been signed in Riyadh by Eng Youssef Al Bassam, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of the SFD, and Filippo Grandi, Commissioner-General of UNRWA. "The Rafah housing project, which began in 2005 but has been halted for over three years by the Israeli blockade, will be restarted following the announcement in July of a partial lifting of the blockade to allow a number of UNRWA housing and school projects to go ahead", said the UNRWA in a press rlease. The pledge of USD 71.5 million will cover completion of Phase 1 of the project, which is approximately one-quarter complete, and embarkation on a new Phase 2. Overall the project will comprise a minimum of 1,500 houses and associated facilities including schools, health and social service facilities, roads, sewage and electricity. Grandi said that "hundreds of refugee families who had their homes destroyed and who have been waiting years for new homes will be delighted at this development. Many of them had been forced to live for years in deplorable conditions in full sight of their partly finished houses. An end to this dreadful situation is now at hand and we shall press ahead with implementation as fast as the limited crossings facilities for the importation of building materials from Israel into Gaza allow". UNRWA and the refugees are grateful to the leadership, government, and people of Saudi Arabia, and to the Saudi Fund, for their generous and consistent support, of which this important pledge is the latest example.