-Caveat Lector- Palestinians forced to swallow pride and accept handouts http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,513581,00.html Israeli blockade robs people of jobs and leaves them dependent on UN food parcels Special report: Israel and the Middle East Ewen MacAskill in Jerusalem Thursday June 28, 2001 The Guardian Flour-covered UN workers distributing sacks of food in and around the Israeli-occupied parts of the West Bank and Gaza are a potent symbol of the sudden descent of much of the Palestinian population into poverty. Before the intifada began last September, the number of Palestinians lining up for food sacks from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was relatively small, restricted to a few cases of hardship. Now a substantial majority queue for aid, says UNRWA. The situation of many Palestinians has deteriorated sharply in recent months. Sami Mshasha, an UNRWA official in Jerusalem, said that food sacks were being distributed to about 217,000 families throughout the West Bank and Gaza. But shortage of funds, despite an international appeal, means such deliveries are restricted to three-month intervals. Israel's sealing off of the entire Gaza Strip, and many towns and villages on the West Bank - Hebron was again added to the list this week - has halted most economic activity in many places. Entrances to these sealed-off towns and villages are blocked with mounds of earth or concrete blocks, and the Israeli army allows few, if any, people either in or out. The Palestinians have made the lifting of the blockades a priority if peace talks are to go ahead. The food parcels are modest: comprising flour, lentils, sugar, cooking oil, dried milk, rice and 150 shekels (about 25). But with many Palestinians unable to cross the blockade and travel to work, the handouts are a form of subsistence. At Jalazun, north of Ramallah on the West Bank, the arrival of the UN vehicles also brings noisy confusion. With flour clouding the air, the sweating aid workers pass sack after sack from the back of lorries to the men, women and children waiting below. It is a scene that the Palestinian Authority should welcome as a useful piece of propaganda. But press coverage of the convoys is discouraged because the recipients often feel humiliated: their attitude is that food aid is something for poor African countries, not for Palestinians. Palestinian youths in Jalazun reflect this attitude and become aggressive when a photographer takes shots of the food distribution. Among the women lining up was mother of six Nuriddin Kharoub, 46, who admitted feeling humiliated. "I am embarrassed. It is like begging," she says. "Who wants to be like a beggar?" The food convoys are irregular; this delivery is the first since January. "The parcel will only last 15 days," says Ms Kharoub. "This is not enough for 11 people living in a house." Her husband had been employed in Israel but has not worked since the intifada began. "Everyone these days is poor," she says. Mahmoud Annti, 37, was the only man in the queue willing to talk: "I am depressed about it. I am ashamed to have to come here. There is no alternative but to queue." Like many other men in Jalazun, Mr Annti was a construction worker, mainly building houses in Israel or for Jewish settlements on the West Bank. "I was earning 1,300 to 1,500 shekels. And now I have to make do with 150 shekels - for three months. "I have taken a loan and got 5,000 shekels into debt. I had a little before - 5,000 in savings - but that has gone. It ran out three months ago." Exhausting their savings on which many Palestinians had depended through the first few months of the intifada partly explains the sudden economic deterioration. In Jerusalem, Dr Mhadhi Abdul Hadi, head of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, said that there is no Palestinian economy left. "There is no work whatsoever. The number under the poverty line is up to 70% now. According to the World Bank, before the intifada, it was 40%," he said. The UNRWA official, Mr Mshasha offers different figures, ranging from 28% to 37% below the poverty line. Tel Aviv partly blames the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, for failing to create a more robust economy in the past decade as president of a corruption-riddled Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians agree, in part, but reply that building a proper economy was impossible as long as Israel remained in control. The Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, acknowledged the Palestinian suffering this week when he said he was deeply worried by events in the West Bank and Gaza. "Israel doesn't know what's going on there, that unemployment has reached 40%. 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