Liam Byrne – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liam Byrne on 2015-02-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 29 January 2015 to Question 222138, which organisations are involved in the process of clearing home-owners’ applications to the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism; how many applicants have been rejected during that process; and what the involvement of the Israeli government is in assessing the security risks associated with each application.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

The organisations involved in the process of clearing home-owners’ applications to the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM) are the UN agencies doing the damage assessment, the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Public Works and Housing and Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Government of Israel.

No individuals have been rejected to date, but a number of the assessments submitted require review ahead of further processing. These were mostly caused by repetition of names of individuals or where the assessments were recorded under the names of owners who are deceased for example. The GRM does not allow for the disqualification of individuals assessed for shelter repair on grounds of political association or geographic location in Gaza.

The Government of Israel, like all participants in the mechanism, is able to object to individuals participating in the GRM.