Lebanese Students in Italy: Hunger, Penury and Isolation

Rome shopping street. AP
Rome shopping street. AP
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Lebanese Students in Italy: Hunger, Penury and Isolation

Rome shopping street. AP
Rome shopping street. AP

The cries of at least 80 Lebanese students suffering from the spread of the coronavirus in Italy have been circulating widely on social media. Their distress under the weight of hunger, penury, isolation and the threat of being infected by the virus has pushed the government to address their plight in Tuesday's statement.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nassif Hitti, discussed the issues facing students abroad, presenting ways to provide them with in-kind and material assistance and said that he would submit a social assistance plan at the request of Prime Minister Hassan Diab.

Jad Reda, a Lebanese student who lives in Ferrara in the province of Emilia Romagna, northern Italy, studying mechanical engineering, tells Asharq Al-Awsat about the situation.

"Things are difficult in general, and the Lebanese students in Italy are struggling financially. Those who work as they complete their studies to meet their needs and the costs of their education lost their jobs for now because of the quarantine. Others have been cut off from the money that they used to receive from parents in Lebanon because of the banking crisis and, after that, the spread of the virus e and the lockdown that accompanied it. They are facing an uncertain future and are unable to pay their rent," he said.

"A large number of them have not found a way to borrow money until things change. The lucky ones whose parents work outside Lebanon are receiving the money they need from them," he added"

Reda stressed that "the Lebanese embassy should intervene and facilitate the arrival of transfers to the students; instead it only checks upon the students’ health and whether or not they were infected and advises them to stay at."

Some of the students are trying to form a committee that will provide those in need with money through donations, said Reda who hopes that the crisis will be over once the quarantine period ends.

"Students are worried about the crisis persisting till after the end of next month," he noted.

This would put them in a truly difficult situation, especially since the attempts of some to return to Lebanon failed amid the Italian government’s inability to test them to ensure that they are healthy and the Lebanese government's refusal to allow them back in without having done the tests.

The number of Lebanese studying abroad has increased over the last few years. Among the main reasons for this is that the costs of studying abroad were cheaper than the “prestigious” universities in Lebanon when the exchange rate of the dollar did not surpass 1,500 Lebanese Lira.

Rami Adwan, the Lebanese ambassador in France, the country that hosts the largest number of Lebanese students, said to Asharq Al-Awsat: “The embassy has set up a department to deal with the affairs of the 5,300 Lebanese Students studying in universities across France to communicate with them."

"Before the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis in Lebanon, we looked after them and worked on solving their problems. We were able to help students in facing all sorts of challenges", he said, adding: “During the virus crisis, we have been working primarily on checking on their health and financial situation."

"While a large number of them have been able to receive transfers, there are some whose parents lost their jobs, making it difficult for them to pay for the costs of their education. So, we contacted the universities that they attended and managed to grant them exemptions that extend until their parents’ situation improves.”

Adwan said the embassy has dedicated two hotlines (0643753072 and 0643753328) that have been operational since the 15th of this month to provide moral support to students who suffer from depression due to mandatory confinement, particularly those who reside alone.

“We are working with the French authorities and Middle East Airlines to provide means for those who wish to return to do so when conditions allow for it,” he concluded.



'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
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'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

After surviving more than a year of war in Gaza, Aisha Khaled is now afraid of dying of hunger if vital aid is cut off next year by a new Israeli law banning the UN Palestinian relief agency from operating in its territory.

The law, which has been widely criticised internationally, is due to come into effect in late January and could deny Khaled and thousands of others their main source of aid at a time when everything around them is being destroyed.

"For me and for a million refugees, if the aid stops, we will end. We will die from hunger not from war," the 31-year-old volunteer teacher told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

"If the school closes, where do we go? All the aspects of our lives are dependent on the agency: flour, food, water ...(medical) treatment, hospitals," Khaled said from an UNRWA school in Nuseirat in central Gaza.

"We depend on them after God," she said.

UNRWA employs 13,000 people in Gaza, running the enclave's schools, healthcare clinics and other social services, as well as distributing aid.

Now, UNRWA-run buildings, including schools, are home to thousands forced to flee their homes after Israeli airstrikes reduced towns across the strip to wastelands of rubble.

UNRWA shelters have been frequently bombed during the year-long war, and at least 220 UNRWA staff have been killed, Reuters reported.

If the Israeli law as passed last month does come into effect, the consequences would be "catastrophic," said Inas Hamdan, UNRWA's Gaza communications officer.

"There are two million people in Gaza who rely on UNRWA for survival, including food assistance and primary healthcare," she said.

The law banning UNRWA applies to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in 1967 during the Six-Day War.

Israeli lawmakers who drafted the ban cited what they described as the involvement of a handful of UNRWA's thousands of staffers in the attack on southern Israel last year that triggered the war and said some staff were members of Hamas and other armed groups.

FRAGILE LIFELINE

The war in Gaza erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas attack. Israel's military campaign has levelled much of Gaza and killed around 43,500 Palestinians, Gaza health officials say. Up to 10,000 people are believed to be dead and uncounted under the rubble, according to Gaza's Civil Emergency Service.

Most of the strip's 2.3 million people have been forced to leave their homes because of the fighting and destruction.

The ban ends Israel's decades-long agreement with UNRWA that covered the protection, movement and diplomatic immunity of the agency in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

For many Palestinians, UNRWA aid is their only lifeline, and it is a fragile one.

Last week, a committee of global food security experts warned there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in northern Gaza, where Israel renewed an offensive last month.

Israel rejected the famine warning, saying it was based on "partial, biased data".

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, said last week that it was continuing to "facilitate the implementation of humanitarian efforts" in Gaza.

But UN data shows the amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level in a year and the United Nations has accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to the north.

"The daily average of humanitarian trucks the Israeli authorities allowed into Gaza last month is 30 trucks a day," Hamdan said, adding that the figure represents 6% of the supplies that were allowed into Gaza before this war began.

"More aid must be sent to Gaza, and UNRWA work should be facilitated to manage this aid entering Gaza," she said.

'BACKBONE' OF AID SYSTEM

Many other aid organizations rely on UNRWA to help them deliver aid and UN officials say the agency is the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza.

"From our perspective, and I am sure from many of the other humanitarian actors, it's an impossible task (to replace UNRWA)," said Oxfam GB's humanitarian lead Magnus Corfixen in a phone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"The priority is to ensure that they will remain ... because they are essential for us," he said.

UNRWA supports other agencies with logistics, helping them source the fuel they need to move staff and power desalination plants, he said.

"Without them, we will struggle with access to warehouses, having access to fuel, having access to trucks, being able to move around, being able to coordinate," Corfixen said, describing UNRWA as "essential".

UNRWA schools also offer rare respite for traumatised children who have lost everything.

Twelve-year-old Lamar Younis Abu Zraid fled her home in Maghazi in central Gaza at the beginning of the war last year.

The UNRWA school she used to attend as a student has become a shelter, and she herself has been living in another school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat for a year.

Despite the upheaval, in the UNRWA shelter she can enjoy some of the things she liked doing before war broke out.

She can see friends, attend classes, do arts and crafts and join singing sessions. Other activities are painfully new but necessary, like mental health support sessions to cope with what is happening.

She too is aware of the fragility of the lifeline she has been given. Now she has to share one copybook with a friend because supplies have run out.

"Before they used to give us books and pens, now they are not available," she said.