The Palestine Refugee Problem - a personal insight (original) (raw)

Why do Palestinians see themselves as refugees after fifty years? The Palestinians have been denied the right to call themselves Palestinians. Golda Meir once said that she was the Palestinian, there was no such thing as a Palestinians.

So the collective memory of the Palestinians is the trauma of being denied to call themselves by the name of the land where generations of their fathers came from, and being denied by the world that they existed, their attachment to a certain part i.e. being specific as mentioning the name of the town , helps them to affirm that they do come from that part- to prove it, they mention that city. Their need is belonging- And their need is that the world admit to their existence. Of course, they feel that now the world admits their are Palestinians, the next step would be the world admits that they have a right to return.

You can find the parallel in the Jewish history. The Jewish nation was denied the right to be called Jewish- being afraid - some even changed their names to be accepted -so they might have the smallest thing -the right to work to feed their families-when they where denied the use of their language.- Now there is a revival in religion, in language and so on. The world has now admitted its guilt, that they stood by and watched while the Jewish Nation was being massacred in the Pogroms and in the Holocaust. However, for a very long time, the world pretended that the Jewish Nation did not exist.

Knowing full well they cannot go back to Haifa, Jaffa and so on, the refugees still insist they want to go back to a place that has been already occupied by families for the last fifty years. i.e. generations of Israelis who are living there. My experience at work - working with refugees in the Lebanon, suggests the reason for this. I do not know about the refugees in Syria, Jordan or even the ones that are back home, and live in camps-

The refugees in the Lebanon are the forgotten people. They live in ghettos, with sewage surrounding them, with electrical wires practically on the ground. Children play very close to them and mothers get electrocuted because of the many wires connecting too many things. There are no paved roads. In some area they are not allowed out of the ghettos. They cannot go to the Lebanese school/universities. They cannot work in many professions although they have studied them. They can work in the camps only. Among the profession they are not allowed to practice outside the camps are, doctors or nurses. They are paid by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society which is also poor. They pay a doctor only $200 a month, so the doctor or nurse has to find other jobs to be able to live.

I cannot blame the Lebanese government. They had experienced a civil ware that has lasted 18 years. They do not want the Palestinians and they want the land the Palestinians refugees are on. There are around 2 million refugees in the Lebanon, some from 1948 and some from 1967. The problem also is that Lebanon has a religious quota- so many Sunni Muslim- so many Shia Muslim so many Maronites, Protestants and each of the other groups. The quota must be kept as each sect is the same as the other-. Now the Palestinians who are in the camps are Sunni Muslims- and the quota for Sunni is full.