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Palestinian refugee camps
Martin O'Malley & John Bowman, CBC News Online
Apr. 30, 2002 (Updated Aug. 1, 2002)

Prime Minister Mackenzie King once said Canada has "too much geography, too little history." The exact opposite applies to the tense situation between Israelis and Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip where - as The New Yorker says about the crisis in the Middle East - "there is too much history and too little geography."

As CBC News Online's Gary Katz explains in his indepth piece on the Middle East, the land where Israel now sits could fit into New Brunswick 3? times, but the stories, the politics, the passions - and the complexities - reach back to antiquity. The situation in 2002 remains as much a snarl as ever, including the years immediately following the creation of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948.

When the dust had settled, Israel controlled three-quarters of what was Palestine, Jordan took control of the West Bank of the Jordan River, and Egypt took over the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians took over nothing, except the transient security of life in refugee camps throughout the region.

In the wave of incursions into the West Bank that began on March 29, Israeli troops, tanks, helicopters and bulldozers moved in on the towns and refugee camps in or near Ramallah, Beit Jala, Qalqilya, Tulkarm, Bethlehem, Jenin, Salfit, Nablus, Hebron, Qabatiyah, Yatta and Dura.

The bloodiest and most significant battle took place in Jenin in the northern end of the West Bank. For days the Israelis designated Jenin a "closed military area," which meant no journalists and aid workers allowed. The Israelis considered Jenin the centre of Palestinian suicide-bomber attacks.

Palestinian militants surprised Israeli troops with fierce resistance, some fighting to their last bullets. The Jenin refugee camp was home to 14,000 Palestinians, most of them in cramped cinder-block houses. Estimates of those killed and injured varied, but the Israelis claimed to have killed some 100 Palestinians, arrested 700 others and suffered 23 casualties.

Many of the Palestinians killed were civilians, some when their homes were bulldozed with them inside. The Palestinians talked of a "massacre" of more than 500 Palestinians by the Israelis, and said nearly the entire camp population was left homeless. The Israelis called this propaganda.

The United Nations appointed a fact-finding mission to investigate what happened in Jenin.

In its final report, the UN team found fault on both sides. It found that 52 Palestinians had died. That's far fewer than the 500 initially reported dead. It also said that 23 Israeli soldiers were killed.

The report faulted Palestinian militants for booby-trapping houses and potentially putting civilians in danger. It also faulted Israelis, however, for using heavy artillery and rockets in densely populated communities.

Israeli troops damaged or destroyed a number of schools, saying that they were institutions used to support terrorism. The UN report cited the Israeli actions as the reason for the collapse of the West Bank economy. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly acknowledged the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian community.

Although the term "massacre" had been previously used to describe the incident at Jenin, the UN left that term out of its report.

More than three million Palestinian refugees live in the 59 UN-operated refugee camps and surrounding areas. The largest number of refugees is in Jordan, with nearly 240,000 reported to be in camps and another 1.3 million living outside of the camps.

The UN also operates refugee camps in these regions (with their refugee populations):

· Syria (383,000)

· Gaza Strip (363,000)

· Lebanon (376,500)

· Saudi Arabia (275,000)

· West Bank (132,000)

· Iraq (90,000)

· Egypt (40,500)

· Libya (8,500)

· Algeria (4,000)

· Tunisia (300)

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Palestinian refugees "are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1949 Arab-Israeli conflict." UNRWA estimates the number of registered Palestinian refugees has grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 3.8 million in 2001, and keeps rising.

Some camps are in urban areas, in or close to towns such as Jenin. Others are in sparsely populated rural areas. After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the different refugee camps fell under three zones - A-zone, B-zone, C-zone. The A-zone camps are under Palestinian control, B-zone camps are under joint Palestinian/Israeli control, and C-zone camps are under Israeli control.

Refugee camp residents run their own activities, with the committees in each camp regarded as official bodies by the UN under the wing of the UNRWA. In the West Bank camps there are facilities for women, disabled refugees and youth. The UNRWA runs 98 elementary schools and preparatory schools in the West Bank camps, which in 1998-99 had 51,944 pupils. UNRWA operates primary health-care facilities, with a 43-bed hospital in the town of Qalqilya. Host countries are responsible for administering and policing refugee camps.

The refugee crisis, combined with the Palestinian "right of return," have been major obstacles to various peace proposals over the years in the Middle East. The most recent peace proposal from Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah did not mention the Palestinian right of return. Israel fears the return of more than three million Palestinian refugees would undermine the Jewish identity of Israel.

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From: http://www.metimes.com/2K1/issue2001-30/opin/suffering_of_palestinian.htm

The suffering of Palestinian children
By Sherri Muzher

Since the uprising against Israeli occupation began in September, many innocent people have died. The loss of innocent life is always tragic, but it is particularly tragic when children are involved. The response to the deaths of Israeli children has been more curfews, Rambo-like firings at shacks, and the demolishing of homes. The Israeli government has justified these measures as necessary.

Three-month-old Diya Tmeizi, a Palestinian infant, has just been shot - believed to be the youngest person killed in 10 months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. Palestinians don't have the luxury of using an army to send a message.

Does the Israeli government realize that Palestinians also feel this same kind of anger when Palestinian children are murdered or injured by Israeli Defense Force (IDF) snipers or the self-righteous Jewish settlers protected by the IDF? Despite the obvious need for an observer force, it is Israel that is to be the ultimate decision-maker on this issue. Ironic, given that it is from Israelis that Palestinian civilians seek protection.

Defense for Children International noted that more than 250 Palestinian children were detained during the first three months of the intifada.

As a States Party to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which entered into force in Israel on November 2,1991, Israel is bound to uphold the articles. However, Israel's record illustrates a patent disregard for its commitments under international law.

Article 37 of the CRC states that "the arrest or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time."

The article also asserts that "every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person," and that "no child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

In contrast, however, Palestinian children arrested, detained, and/or imprisoned by the Israeli occupation authorities routinely face violations of their rights, as provided in the CRC, the U.N. Convention Against Torture, the Fourth Geneva Convention and other international instruments.

Such violations include being subjected to: torture, both physical and psychological; arbitrary arrests and detention; detention without trial; detention with criminal prisoners; detention with adult prisoners; and detention outside of the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel's own B'Tselem has just issued a report detailing the torture of Palestinian minors in Israeli jails. Where has the outrage been, particularly among many in the American Jewry?

In addition to being subjected to violence, Palestinian children are currently unable to go to school due to Israel's siege.

And since the death of 12-year-old Muhammed Al Durra, who was shot while crouching behind his father, many children now suffer from nightmares and bed-wetting.

Anxiety had afflicted tens of thousands of Palestinian children even before the intifada erupted last September. An in-depth study showed that there were 50,000 children suffering from anxiety disorders in Gaza alone - directly attributed to the torture of their fathers in Israeli prisons.

Because of the constant closures that prevent Palestinians from going to their jobs in Israel, it is estimated that 25 percent of children are now the sole breadwinners in Palestinian households. The consequences are far less severe when a Palestinian child, rather than adult, is caught sneaking past Israeli checkpoints to sell small items, like pencils.

And what punishment does the Israeli criminal justice system feel Israeli killers of Palestinian children deserve? Throughout this Israeli occupation, Israeli settlers have beaten to death several Palestinian children. Their punishment is often a mere slap on the wrist.

Consider one of the more recent cases where the Attorney General's Office asked that an Israeli settler be released after serving only months in prison. He kicked a young Palestinian child in the head until he died. Despite the evidence and his own confession that he even pressed his shoe against the child's neck, the prosecutor felt that the months he served in prison were sufficient.

For far too long, the pain and suffering of Palestinian children has been minimized. Israeli spinmeisters have reduced the significance of all of Israel's violations of children's rights by depicting Palestinians as hatemongers.

Palestinian children, like their parents, are not robots. They have feelings and react to their intolerable living conditions.

As the great Rabbi Hillel once said, "Don't do unto others as you wouldn't want done unto you." It's a shame that more Israelis haven't taken this golden rule to heart.

Sherri Muzher is a freelance writer for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and Former Executive Director of the Council for Palestinian Restitution and Repatriation.