The Times of Israel reports: Qatar has announced a pledge of $150 million in humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip, the state-run Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported late Wednesday evening.
Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani ordered the Qatar Fund for Development to send the aid to Gaza “to lessen the increasing graveness of the humanitarian tragedy” in the coastal enclave, the QNA report said. The Qatar Fund for Development is a state-sponsored aid organization that supports development and humanitarian projects in different parts of the world.
Gaza suffers from severely inadequate water, electricity and health infrastructure, widespread poverty and an extremely high unemployment rate, both due to the Israeli and Egyptian blockades — Israel says it is necessary to prevent arms from reaching Hamas terrorists — and due to ongoing conflict between the Hamas terror group that rules Gaza and the Palestinian Authority, from which Hamas wrested control of the Strip in 2007.
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