{"id":39452,"date":"2014-02-10T12:04:56","date_gmt":"2014-02-10T12:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=39452"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:11:07","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:11:07","slug":"sentenced-to-life-at-birth-what-do-palestinian-refugees-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/02\/sentenced-to-life-at-birth-what-do-palestinian-refugees-want\/","title":{"rendered":"Sentenced to Life at Birth: What Do Palestinian Refugees Want?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For more than 66 years, Palestinian refugees have been languishing in squalid conditions across camps in the Middle East. But do all of them agree that a return to Palestine is necessarily the best solution? Through her extensive research, Paula Schmitt finds that while different refugees may have different desires, hopelessness remains everyone\u2019s worst enemy.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

\"IDF<\/a>

IDF soldiers expel the residents of Imwas from their village during the 1967 Six Day War.
(photo: www.palestineremembered.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s something almost cruel about asking a Palestinian refugee whether he would accept living peacefully with Israel were he ever allowed to return. It feels like a sadistic exercise: treat a man like a lesser human, deny him a country, a house, a profession, keep him confined for years and once he is released expect him to stand up, dust the humiliation off his clothes and shake hands with his captor.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian refugees I spoke to are not willing to shake hands with their captors \u2013 at least not if another Palestinian is watching. Pride is the last thing they still own, the tenacity typical of those who have nothing to lose on one hand, and no hope of gaining anything on the other. But what I learned once the conversations became private is that many of those refugees would just like to live in peace with dignity, and for that they are willing to give a pardon that has never been asked of them. In fact, pressured with a thousand hypotheses of restitution, acknowledgement of guilt and requests for forgiveness, almost every Palestinian I spoke to is ready to shake that proverbial hand and finally start a life that has been kept suspended ever since they were born.<\/p>\n

Poster-children of their tragedy<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s peace, I\u2019m the first person ready to go back,\u201d says 75-year-old Adnan Abu-Dhubah, his determination looking unsteady on the wooden stick he uses for a cane. There is no handle on the stick, and with the weight of his body his palm is branded with a square wound. Mr. Abu-Dhubah has known little else than life in a camp. He is one of 30,000 refugees in the Gaza camp in Jerash, Jordan, living in squalid conditions, walking through mud and sewage every day. Like most poor people, Mr. Abu-Dhubah looks older than his age. But time inflicts a heavier load on Palestinian refugees, because unlike other poor people they are denied the most precious and immaterial of all commodities: the hope to overcome one\u2019s condition. Palestinian refugees are sentenced to life at birth, and for many of them even a winning lottery ticket wouldn\u2019t be enough to buy the right to own property, or enough education to become a lawyer or a doctor. Most of the 5 million refugees registered with UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) in five different host countries live in similar or worse conditions, permanently deprived of most rights ascribed to the citizens of any country. There are more than 70 professions denied to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, for example, and over 80 of them in Jordan. In neither country can they work even as a taxi driver, for that would require a driver\u2019s license and most of them cannot legally possess one. In Lebanon, even the materials necessary for building a refugee shack are regulated by law \u2013 bricks and a proper roof are too permanent, and thus illegal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one who put us in this position is Israel \u2013 not Jordan, not Lebanon or any other Arab country. The Arab countries have not stood by us, it\u2019s true, they have not fulfilled their duties towards the Palestinian, but I don\u2019t want to mix the blame here,\u201d says another resident of the Gaza camp, 40-year-old Faraj Chalhoub, father of eight children.<\/p>\n

That is yet another catastrophe almost exclusive to the Palestinians. Because their expulsion is illegal under a number of international laws, and because such injustice has never been rectified, some countries fear that by accepting the refugees as citizens they would be helping Israel \u2018erase the evidence.\u2019 In their exceptionally miserable condition, Palestinian refugees are the poster-children of their tragedy, the living proof of Israeli crimes and the indelible evidence that will stay exposed for everyone to see until they are allowed to return.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish I could go to smell the air of my country and die,\u201d says 70-year-old Massioun, the wife of Mr. Abu-Dhubah, herself also using a wood stick as a cane, this time with a makeshift handle. All her brothers and sisters live in Palestine and they\u2019ve been separated since 1967. Like all refugees in Jerash, Massioun is a victim of what they refer to as Nakbatein<\/i>, or two catastrophes: her family was expelled twice, first from the village of Barbara in 1948, and then again from Gaza in 1967. Of the more than 2 million refugees registered in Jordan with UNRWA there are about 120,000 who suffered the same two Nakbas, and none got Jordanian citizenship, unlike the refugees who came in 1948.<\/p>\n

\u2018Doing the job that Israel should be doing\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n

For Kathem Ayesh, head of The Jordanian Society for Return and Refugees, keeping Palestinians in camps without any rights serves Israel. \u201cIf you keep Palestinians in such a miserable situation, they will never think about going back to their homeland, they will be desperate to eat and solve daily problems, to have the essentials to live. They won\u2019t have time to think of their rights.\u201d Though his theory makes sense, it\u2019s not what I witnessed.<\/p>\n

This paradox is part of a long and old debate. In the rest of the Arab world, it\u2019s not rare to hear invectives against Jordan for \u201cdoing the job that Israel should be doing.\u201d There\u2019s no doubt, and it\u2019s quite understandable, that refugees living in camps as non-citizens have an extra urgency to return. But the argument that Jordan may be alleviating Israel\u2019s burden is technically misguided, if for nothing else because the refugees to whom Jordan gave citizenship are still registered with UNRWA, still counting as refugees if and when a collective restitution is implemented.<\/p>\n

It is true that most of the people who said they would not want to go back to Palestine \u2013 and there were many of them \u2013 have a Jordanian passport. They explained it makes no sense to go back and start a new life over there when they have a full life here. But they are still refugees, and they still demand compensation for all the things that have been stolen from them. For Taalat Othman, an UNRWA physics teacher who heads the Association for NGOs and Committees Responsible for Defending the Palestinian Right of Return, \u201cWe demand to return to our villages, cities and our land, which have been forcefully occupied by the Israeli gangs, and to be reimbursed for all losses, both spiritual and material.\u201d Mr Othman\u2019s association has over 200 representatives in refugee camps.<\/p>\n

Despite their refugee status, most of those who would not go back to Palestine are Jordanians, and they can vote, run for office, own businesses and do not feel they are treated differently. Government figures put the total number of Palestinians at a strategic 49 percent of the Jordanian population, but unofficial figures given by experts claim that number is closer to 75 percent, whether they are registered as refugees or not.<\/p>\n

Taxi driver Mohammad is one of them. Like many who were interviewed for this feature, he prefers not to tell me his full name, explaining in perfect English that he \u201ccould be misinterpreted.\u201d His father is from Jerusalem but he was born in Jordan. \u201cYes, Palestine is my homeland,\u201d he says, \u201cIt\u2019s a dream. But when I think with reason, what am I going to do there? I\u2019ve never been there. If I go to Palestine I will be a stranger. Even with a house I wouldn\u2019t go. I\u2019m 45 now. I\u2019m not going to start a new life all over again.\u201d That sentiment is shared even by very politicized people who work at the UN with refugees, and are refugees themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a safe haven for us Palestinians,\u201d says a UN official who prefers to remain anonymous. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like I am different than any other Jordanian in the country. I have properties here, and a car. My children are in the university. I can travel; I have a passport. This country has been very generous to us. I was once asked if there was a bus outside waiting for me and my family, would I go back? No. I would not go back to Palestine. My life is here. My friends, my family, my everything, my memories if you wish. I love Palestine. I would like to visit, but not live there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The old may die, but will the young forget?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yet while the refugees from \u201848 have the luxury to weigh the pros and cons of the hypothetical arrangement, \u201867 refugees can dream of little else. It is hard to imagine anyone living in the Jerash\u2019s Gaza camp wanting to stay where they are. The same can be assumed of all the refugee camps I visited in Lebanon: Sabra and Shatila, Mar Elias, Bourj el-Barajneh, Nahr el-Bared. Scenes of gloom repeat themselves endlessly, punctuated as they are by cute, happy children who make photo essays slightly less disheartening.<\/p>\n

In one of the houses I entered in Jerash, I was received by a very old couple sitting on the floor. They sleep, eat and sit every day on the cold and humid cement. The woman, who thinks she is older than 80, cares for her blind husband despite having a back that is completely bent forward, incapable of straightening up. She doesn\u2019t show much interest in an interview, and whenever she hears the word Palestine she sobs. But she made good use of my presence by holding my arm so I could help her stand up off the floor and go to the toilet. She fights that battle every day, a constant struggle to overcome the minimum human necessities we perform without a thought. But that daily hardship does not diminish her desire to go back. It just keeps it alive. She tried to tell me about the time when she and her family were expelled, after their neighbors were killed. But her story was interrupted every five words by her breathing \u2013 words and breath would not come simultaneously \u2013 and in between them she would moan in pain, holding her stomach.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe old will die, the young will forget.\u201d<\/p>\n

This maxim has been mistakenly attributed to David Ben-Gurion, but who said it is less relevant than who thinks it. And many right-wing Israeli politicians do. They hope Palestinians will not be as persistent and righteous as the survivors and victims of the Holocaust and their relatives were in seeking restitution and reparations.<\/p>\n

When it comes to restitution, those two peoples are worlds apart. Unlike Palestinians, Jews have been extremely organized and unyielding in their claims for compensation and justice. Almost 70 years after the end of WWII, associations like the World Jewish Congress are still demanding changes in Germany\u2019s laws to facilitate the recovery of art and utensils from Jewish property stolen by the Nazis. Austria, Holland and France have already worked in that direction, according to the WJC President Ronald S. Lauder. As recently as July 2013, the Associated Press reported on $1.3 billion paid by Swiss banks to the heirs of Jews who owned dormant bank accounts. Hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors are paid monthly stipends by the German government. And in May of 2013, the German government announced it was committing $1 billion for the home care of Holocaust survivors around the world. The deal was reached between the German Finance Ministry and another Jewish fund for victims of Nazi crimes, the Claims Conference. A keyword search on the\u00a0Haaretz <\/i>(one of the best-selling Israeli dailies) website\u00a0shows an average of three articles every day with the word Holocaust in it.<\/p>\n

Such a sense of justice seems to strike Israel as a victim, yet never as a perpetrator. But the orchestrated resolve for seeking WWII restitution has been inspiring Palestinian victims of the Nakba. They are educating themselves and establishing new institutions to preserve their history, to lobby for justice and to demand legal and financial restitution. Rather than turn the other cheek, the Palestinians are more likely to follow the Old Testament and demand an eye for an eye. In Jordan, I met the heads of two associations created only in the past two years for the defense of the right of return. Among all the refugees I interviewed, not a single one \u2013 even those not interested in going back to Palestine \u2013 is willing to give up the right to justice and compensation. One obscure piece of history that is coming to light only now is an indication that the axiom thought to have been said by Ben-Gurion may not be true after all: yes, the old are indeed dying, but the young are unlikely to forget.<\/p>\n

Uncovering a silenced history<\/b><\/p>\n

Hidden pieces of the Nakba are slowly becoming common knowledge, and fabricated history is being somehow \u2018de-fabricated.\u2019 One such subject is the organized robbery of Palestinian-owned books by the Israeli army and the Hebrew University, those whom Ilan Pappe referred to as \u201cthe official looters.\u201d Thousands of books were stolen from Palestinian houses by soldiers deployed to the villages with that specific goal. Those books are now in Israel\u2019s National Library in Jerusalem. Still bearing dedications and handwritten notes, they are all filed under the initials \u201cAP\u201d: abandoned property. Such \u201cabandoned property\u201d is now under the supervision of the Orwellian-sounding Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cPalestinian-owned<\/a>

\u201cPalestinian-owned books at Israel\u2019s National Library, marked \u2018AP\u2019 for \u2018abandoned property. (Screenshot from \u2018The Great Book Robbery\u2019)<\/p><\/div>\n

Another piece of history quietly surfacing, and also kept under wraps by the same department, is the almost mysterious case of the confiscation of money and safe deposit boxes owned by Palestinians. I found only three scholars who have studied the subject. One of those scholars is Sreemati Mitter, a College Fellow in Middle Eastern History at Harvard University working on a dissertation called \u2018A History of Money in Palestine.\u2019 Wary of giving short answers to questions that require a lot of qualification, and stating that she doesn\u2019t want \u201cany hint of certainty attached to those numbers,\u201d Ms. Mitter released a table she compiled with the figures estimated by the three scholars: herself, Michael Fischbach and the late Sami Hadawi. Referring to Fischbach as \u201cthe gold standard,\u201d she cautions that she thinks he \u201ccompletely underestimated the total amount frozen [by Israel].\u201d The numbers by Sami Hadawi are higher, but they include estimates of confiscated safe deposit boxes. Mitter believes \u201cthe real number is somewhere in between the two.\u201d<\/p>\n

A document issued by the UN on January 16, 1950 says that, \u201cThe Government of Israel declares that it has no intention of confiscating blocked Arab accounts in Israeli banks and that these funds will be available to the proper owners on the conclusion of peace, subject to such general currency regulations as may be operative at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitter says that, in principle, \u201cevery single frozen Arab Palestinian bank account was released after the settlement between the two banks (Ottoman and Barclays) and the Israeli government in 1956. But, in practice, many Palestinians, particularly refugees, never saw a penny from their accounts. Where did the money go? No one knows.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Professor Fischbach, the confiscation of \u201cland, buildings, household goods, farm animals and tools, merchandise in warehouses, factories, etc., was worth much, much more than the money in blocked bank accounts. [\u2026] The Israelis also said they would not pay compensation for [\u2026] moveable property, cars, factory inventories, household furniture, farm animals, etc. etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

An eroding safety net<\/b><\/p>\n

Throughout my research, I came to learn that nationalism unites Palestinians much less than the fact they are all part of the same tragedy. All those individual calamities, the looting, the killing, the stealing, and the complete absence of acknowledgement by the perpetrator are the things that actually unite Palestinians the world over, and will keep doing so for as long as they are all victims of an injustice that is yet to be atoned for. It\u2019s something quite evident among any people that have been collectively victimized \u2013 no matter how much an individual overcame his personal fate, he cannot turn a blind eye to the fellow victims who didn\u2019t benefit from the same luck.<\/p>\n

T.M., a wealthy woman in her 40s, married to a Jordanian man with three children, knows she would never move back to Palestine, as her whole life has been made in Jordan. But her will to fight for the right of return \u201cis not about what citizenship I carried when I was born, where I lived, where my children were born. It\u2019s about the struggle, the occupation, and me, as a human being, how I identify with those people. Do you understand? It\u2019s in my heart, it is my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is perhaps the biggest mistake still perpetrated by Israel, not only morally \u2013 even strategically.<\/p>\n

While the original refugees are indeed dying, their descendants are multiplying. What is now a group of more than five million people started out as about 700,000. According to a document issued by the UN<\/a> General Assembly in October 1950, among the refugees were even \u201c17,000 Jews who fled inside the borders of Israel during the fighting.\u201d They were also given assistance, food and aid, and were registered with UNRWA, but were later absorbed by Israel, who felt \u201cthat the idea of relief distribution is repugnant.\u201d<\/p>\n

It must be repugnant to Palestinians too, as many refuse to collect their aid. But there are too many of them living in utter misery. According to public information officer of UNRWA, Anwar Abu Sakieneh, the EU, UK, and Japan are some of the donors, but the United States was the single largest donor in 2013 with a total contribution of over $294 million, followed by the European Commission (over $209 million). These contributions made up about 42 percent of UNRWA\u2019s total income for its regular and non-regular budgets. The services it provides are schooling, health care, universities, some hospitalization, and even cash handouts to families it once referred to as \u201chardship cases\u201d but now euphemistically describes as being \u201cunder UNRWA\u2019s safety net.\u201d Those people are so poor they cannot meet daily basic food requirements. \u201cWe provide them with a ration of food every three months for each person in the family: lentils, rice, oil, milk, sometimes canned food. And we give a modest amount of $10 per each person of those families for those three months. It\u2019s part of the package. Ten dollars per every three months for each person in the family,\u201d Abu Sakieneh repeats. In total, there are 56,000 people under that safety net.<\/p>\n

\"Jerash<\/a>

Jerash refugee camp, Jordan. (photo: Paula Schmitt)<\/p><\/div>\n

We could live in peace \u2013 perhaps even together<\/b><\/p>\n

But while they have some help for survival, refugees say they believe they have none for their return. Of the more than 40 refugees I asked \u201cwho is fighting for their right,\u201d the answer was practically unanimous: no one. They don\u2019t trust the Palestinian Authority and do not believe Hamas has any real power. \u201cNo one represents the Palestinian people. Abu Mazen works for the Americans. Hamas can\u2019t do anything. The Palestinians represent themselves, there\u2019s nobody. Fatah doesn\u2019t do anything either,\u201d says Mr. Chalhoub. For Mr. Kathem, the PLO needs to be revived. Another refugee in the Gaza camp who withheld his name said Abbas \u201csold the Palestinians to the Israelis.\u201d Hani Jaber, a 39-year-old taxi driver who is both a refugee and a Jordanian citizen, at least trusts somebody: \u201cI\u2019m not religious, but Khaled Meshaal is a logic man, he is good. Until now Mahmoud Abbas didn\u2019t do anything for us, the Palestinian people. I don\u2019t care if I am 48 or 67,\u201d he says, referring to the refugees as most of them do, by the date of their exile. \u201cWhat about us, the people outside? I didn\u2019t vote. My right as a refugee is to choose my leader.\u201d On that, every refugee seems to agree: they should be given the right to vote and be directly represented.<\/p>\n

They all concur on their demands too. When asked what their main wish is, they start with the same answer: to go back to their houses, the properties they owned and lived in at the time of their expulsion. Confronted with the possibility that such thing may be impossible, they choose to at least live in their village, and get financial compensation for their losses. More often than not, the answers would include the end of Israel. But here is where something quite surprising and very conspicuous would happen, almost invariably. After talking about the horrors committed by Israel and the need for justice and sometimes revenge, almost everyone, with one single clear exception, agreed that if Israel stopped \u201coccupying our land, killing and humiliating our people, stealing our water, and respected our rights, we could live in peace. Perhaps even together.\u201d That quote, exactly as it is written, was said by someone who preferred not to reveal his name because he was afraid of \u201clooking weak.\u201d He didn\u2019t look weak. He looked, instead, just tired.<\/p>\n

Yet there is a fine line between being tired while holding a little hope, and being desperate while holding none. A visit to the children\u2019s art school in the Gaza camp gives a good idea of how they feel, and how their children will feel in their turn. Most of the drawings show kids being killed by soldiers, armed men aiming at a child with a rock. There were drawings of mothers holding their babies, others wiping their tears in the Palestinian flag, a woman hugging an olive tree. But one drawing was emblematic of that moment when tiredness becomes despair, when humiliation grows so unbearable that one chooses honor over life. The drawing showed a boy with his arm raised about to throw a stone. His shadow on the ground, much bigger than the boy, held not a stone, but a gun.<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Paula Schmitt (@schmittpaula<\/a>) is a Brazilian journalist, Middle East correspondent, author of the non-fiction,\u00a0<\/i>Advertised to Death \u2013 Lebanese Poster-Boys, and the novel\u00a0<\/i>Eudemonia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 972mag.com<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS<\/i> <\/b><\/span>campaign to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/b> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/b> BARCODE<\/b> STARTS WITH<\/b> 729<\/b>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For more than 66 years, Palestinian refugees have been languishing in squalid conditions across camps in the Middle East. But do all of them agree that a return to Palestine is necessarily the best solution? Through her extensive research, Paula Schmitt finds that while different refugees may have different desires, hopelessness remains everyone\u2019s worst enemy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}