Japan sends blankets, sleeping mats to devastated Gaza

TOKYO, Jan. 23 Kyodo -
Japan began airlifting on Friday some $1 million worth of blankets, sleeping
mats and plastic sheets for making temporary shelters to Palestinians in Gaza,
in response to an emergency appeal by the United Nations amid an acute shortage
of necessities caused by Israeli attacks.
In view of the dire situation especially after thousands of tons of supplies
were destroyed when Israel hit U.N. warehouses in Gaza last week, Japan decided
to contribute all its available stockpiles -- 29,000 blankets, 20,000 sleeping
mats and 8,000 plastic sheets -- to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East immediately, Japanese government officials
said.
Also on Friday, Waleed Siam, representative of the Permanent General Mission of
Palestine in Japan, called for Japanese assistance in reconstruction,
especially for the economy, agricultural sector, education and other fields.
''We call upon our friends, the Japanese government and people, to help us to
rebuild Palestine the same way you have rebuilt Japan after World War II,'' he
told a news conference in Tokyo. ''We don't want to resist in military form. We
want to resist through economic development.''
''Help us protect our children from death. I believe to protect our children is
to educate them about what the way of life is,'' he added. ''Also, hopefully we
can be educating the Israelis on the other side that war and military action is
not a solution.''
Approved by the Cabinet on Friday morning, the assistance will be the
largest-ever provision, by volume, of relief items from the Cabinet Office's
stockpiles, according to officials of the government's International Peace
Cooperation Headquarters.
The first batch of the relief items, to be airlifted from Japan's overseas
stockpile base in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, will arrive at El Arish
International Airport in Egypt on Friday afternoon, about 50 kilometers from
the border to the Gaza Strip. It will then be transported by land and
distributed by UNRWA.
A second batch from Sharjah will arrive Saturday, while other batches flown
from the stockpile base in Yokohama are expected to arrive later next week on
commercial flights via Europe and Cairo, according to Satoshi Kinoshita, deputy
director of the headquarters' secretariat.
The relief items will be in addition to the $10 million worth of emergency aid
pledged by Japan earlier to support international efforts for the
reconstruction of Gaza.
Of the $10 million, the Foreign Ministry announced Friday that $3 million will
be given to the U.N. Children's Fund to provide medical and other supplies for
300,000 children and 50,000 women in need, and $4 million allocated to the
World Food Program for food aid expected to benefit about 270,000 Palestinians.
A close ally of the United States, Japan has traditionally maintained
relatively good relations with both Israel and the Palestinians and has been
involved in the Middle East peace process.
More than 1,300 people were killed and some 5,300 others injured in the massive
air and ground offensive carried out by Israel from late December in its
conflict with Hamas. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were forced to seek
refuge after their homes were destroyed in the attacks, which also hit schools
and hospitals.
Israeli Ambassador to Japan Nissim Ben Shitrit, who spoke at a news conference
in Tokyo on Thursday, defended his country's actions by saying the aim was to
''target terrorism'' and to ''convey a clear message to Hamas that...Israel
will no longer accept the situation in which its citizens are under threat.''
He dismissed international criticism that the Israeli military action was
disproportional, claiming that Hamas have fired 8,000 rockets from Gaza over
the past eight years and threatened the lives of some 1 million Israelis. But
he dodged a reporter's question when asked to give exact figures of the
casualties from the rocket attacks.
==Kyodo