Poverty on rise in Gaza

Seven years into an Israeli blockade and ten months into a crippling Egyptian one, Gaza's economic growth has evaporated and unemployment soared to almost 40 percent by the end of 2013, according to Reuters.

Living on U.N. handouts of rice, flour, canned meat and sunflower oil, with limited access to proper health care or clean water, many Gaza families have no money, no jobs and no hope, it said. 

The news agency said well over half of Gaza residents receive food from the United Nations, and the number is on the rise. 

The agency quoted UNRWA, the U.N. Refugee Works Agency devoted to feeding and housing the refugees, as saying it was now feeding some 820,000, up by 40,000 in the last year. The U.N.'s World Food Program (WFP) gives food aid to some 180,000 other residents.

More than 1.2 million of 1.8 million Gazans are refugees or their descendants who fled or were driven from land that became part of Israel in the war of its foundation in 1948.

According to Reuters, there are 13,000 cancer sufferers in the Strip and it is the second highest cause of death among Palestinians after heart disease.

Once the a main conduit for Gazans seeking treatment abroad, the crossing with neighboring Egypt is now only open to people, including the sick, around two days each month. More and more, poverty is also staunching the flow.

Treatment in Gaza was rendered harder by the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords because radiation chemotherapy, the two sides agreed, could have military applications. Only five practicing oncologists remain in Gaza.