Not for Palestinians
Ibrahim Alsaafin
In UNHCR history, refugees of war and natural catastrophes
have been taken care of. Whenever a conflict starts, UNHCR was there to provide
food and shelter for the becoming homeless in one direction, and applying some
pressure to ensure their return to their original land and homes, if they still
there.
Two years before UNHCR was founded, a forced displacement
against the majority of Palestinians who were exiled from their lands to
refugee camps took place, where UN took the initiative and founded UNRWA to
take care of them. Two years later, no hope was rising in the horizon for those
refugees to return home. UNHCR was founded, but Palestinians were kept under
the umbrella of UNRWA, maybe because one of UNHCR goals is to work on ensuring
the return of refugees.
As years were passing, the tents became houses. And as the
population of Palestinian refugees kept growing, the houses became buildings on
the same spot and boundaries of the original tent encampments back in 1948. Now,
the refugee camps are neighborhoods, poor ones though, distributed between
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, West Bank and Gaza Strip. People there living day to
day while their case is completely ignored on the negotiations table. What negotiations
anyway!
More than 66% of the Palestinian people are refugees. Having
the UNRWA to take care of them makes it a government-like institution who provides
education, health care, quarterly food supplies and vacancies to refugee workers,
but not the pursuit their right of return.
It's clearly obvious why the Palestinians were meant to remain
under UNRWA not UNHCR; because they meant to remain refugees for a very long
time. Meanwhile the allocations of UNRWA have been sized down while the
Palestinian refugees are restricted from working freely in their refuge destinations,
more repulsive factors are added on them to start searching for new places to
immigrate to, far far away from the surroundings of their lost land.
published on Debate Politics forum on 22 Jun 2013
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