{"id":1609,"date":"2006-09-14T06:15:02","date_gmt":"2006-09-14T10:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1609"},"modified":"2006-09-14T06:15:02","modified_gmt":"2006-09-14T10:15:02","slug":"turning-a-blind-eye-will-not-make-the-palestinian-camps-go-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1609","title":{"rendered":"Turning a blind eye will not make the Palestinian camps go away"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reader’s opinion by Rana El Khatib<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Another war is over in Lebanon. Billions of dollars will soon flood in and the country will, once again, work toward rebuilding the concrete and infrastructure. Human healing takes longer, and in some cases, even that may not be in the cards. As Lebanon sets about restoring what was lost in damage, and the promise of a brighter tomorrow twinkles in the distance, I happened to visit the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut.<\/p>\n

Walking through the camps is to touch, smell, and experience gross injustice – poverty and humiliation all balled into a decaying, dilapidated, neglected corner of Lebanon.<\/p>\n

With the world rushing in to support the country, Palestinians in the camps know that they will not see any of the funds trickle down to improve, even slightly, their miserable existence.<\/p>\n

Sabra and Shatila are only two of 12 Palestinian refugee camps scattered across Lebanon. It is as though everyone – Israel, Lebanon, the US, the “international community” – hopes the Palestinian refugees might all just disappear into the background.<\/p>\n

It is as though they hope that maybe if enough time passes the problem of the refugees will somehow dissipate. Maybe the Palestinians may even eventually accept the awful hand they were dealt and just allow the world to move on from a historic blunder they concocted at the expense of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

The hope that Palestinians will just go away is as unrealistic today as it was some 60 years ago when the ethno-exclusive religious Jewish state was created on Palestinian homes and land, making refugees of some 750,000 innocent people and internally displacing some 45,000.<\/p>\n

They are not going away, and they are not about to forget who they were and how they ended up where they have. They cannot forget who they were because the past is all they have left. <\/p>\n

The present and the future hold nothing but empty promises, and even those are fading.<\/p>\n

The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) has served as a lifeline for the swell of people caged inside the oppressive walls of refugee camps. There are 394,532 Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA in Lebanon alone. They are nonentities without social and civil rights. They have limited access to the public health or educational facilities and no access to public social services. And they can only work in some 70 limiting professions, which has led to high rates of unemployment among the refugee population; all the makings of a disaster in the works.<\/p>\n

The camps are breeding grounds for contempt. How can they not be? Bitterness and a deep sense of injustice oozes from every millimeter of their densely packed, disregarded existence. The stench and scars of the camps only mirror the internal Palestinian refugees’ emotional wounds that have festered for some 60 years.<\/p>\n

Palestinians have no out or hope for a future. Living in squalid camps as nonentities is their only option. Sabra and Shatila are but one grim, overpopulated, neglected slum bursting at the seams with discontent – an alarming site in a forgotten corner of the world. Palestinians are not going away but their pain and suffering have not yet ended.
\nSomething has to give.<\/p>\n

Rana El Khatib is a Palestinian poet based in Beirut. Her most recent work was “Branded: Poetry of a so-called terrorist.” She wrote this piece for The Daily Star.<\/em><\/p>\n

(hat tip<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reader’s opinion by Rana El Khatib Another war is over in Lebanon. Billions of dollars will soon flood in and the country will, once again, work toward rebuilding the concrete and infrastructure. Human healing takes longer, and in some cases, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-pX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}