Israel's Gaza blockade: Millions of dollars worth of aid piles up in warehouses

By October, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) expects to have spent $140 million on Gaza recovery projects, some of it coming from a $400 million “downpayment” to Gaza and the West Bank that President Obama announced in June. USAID is still negotiating with Israeli officials to get approval for 9 of its 21 proposed projects.

In the meantime, delays have cost donors. USAID spent as much as $1.5 million a month in the past year on salaries, grant costs, trucks, and a warehouse in Ramallah at a time when it acknowledged that nongovernmental organization partners were operating at “a very low level of activity.”

USAID spokesman Adnan Joulani said it was careful not to buy items until it knew they could be shipped to Gaza, thereby averting higher warehouse charges.

Storage delays and a lack of available materials for the first phase of the largest water-sector project, a $75 million project led by the World Bank and on hold for about four years, have added $3 million to its cost, Mr. Sheikh says. He said just $500,000 of a budgeted $30 million in materials in materials have been purchased due to concern over storage costs.

A year ago, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) paid $1 million to settle a lawsuit with a contractor when a machine designed to crush debris – in this case, the remains of evacuated settlements – was delayed for two years at the port, says Basil Nasser, the head of its Gaza office.

The contract was canceled. The UNDP is now trying to recoup an extra $2.5 million it spent storing materials to build homes for refugees.

Mr. Nasser's office has spent $60,000 on salaries in the past three years for workers who did no work because the program was “stopped,” he says.

Welding tools, car engine parts sit idle

Much of the equipment still blocked from entering Gaza due to cited security concerns is also the most expensive – and, aid agencies say, the most needed to assist the 1.5 million people living there in increasingly dire circumstances.

Medical supplies and more than $1 million in computer equipment have been held up for testing requirements that should not be imposed on humanitarian goods, says Tim Henry, a logistics officer for UNRWA. He says Israeli officials informed him last week that those requirements will be lifted in September. Needles, for instance, had been banned because the manufacturer's stamp was not on each wrapper.

Welding tools, hydraulic presses and parts for a car engine – equipment for a vocational training center – still sit in shrink-wrapped piles in a warehouse at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s Jerusalem headquarters.

UNRWA has paid more than $60,000 to store similar equipment in Ashdod since 2007. Together, the equipment is worth $450,000. The United States is by far the agency’s largest donor, giving it $268 million to spend last year on projects it saw as most urgent.

The biggest-ticket items still banned from Gaza are parked next to the warehouse: two of 15 sanitation vehicles worth $1.2 million. One of them is designed for trash removal. The other, outfitted with a large tank, is designed to suck up sewage.

At least 50 million liters of raw or poorly-treated sewage is released from Gaza into the sea daily, much of it flowing from open roadside waste channels near refugee camps, municipal officials report.

While materials for the biggest water-treatment facility are still stored in Ashdod, and the plants themselves are years from projected completion, the vehicles could be used immediately.

“The state of refugee camps in Gaza is so lamentably poor that it’s really very shocking that these vehicles are not being allowed in,” says Chris Gunness, UNRWA’s spokesman.

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