1. The ever increasing plight of the Palestinians
Life is a bed of thorns growing up in a refugee camp, an existence of poverty, inadequate access to education, lack of access to recreational or sporting facilities and scarce opportunities. Hopelessness and despair abound. This is a reality that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have known as their childhood for the past 60 years.
The West Bank has the largest number of recognized Palestine refugee camps and is home to over 800,000 refugees who live scattered among 19 refugee camps, with some 50,000 living in Nablus’ four main refugee camps. The largest of them, Balata, has a population similar to that of the smallest camp in Gaza. Most of the others live in West Bank towns and villages; the Old City of Nablus houses many poor families of refugee origin. In total, there are 762 820 refugees living in the West Bank. These camps suffer from suffocating high population densities. For example, the 22 855 of Balata refugee camp live on less than 2 square kilometers of land. Their populations are young, with 60% less than 19 years old. Families live in square, concrete houses with just a few rooms; homes ill-equipped to deal with the extreme heat of the summer and cold of the winter. Water is limited and often unclean, plumbing very basic and sewage systems inadequate.
These refugees were plunged into even greater poverty after being cut-off from the Israeli labor market at the beginning of the Second Intifada. The camps are so crowded that the typical street is barely wider than a grown man’s shoulders. Only a couple streets are wide enough to accommodate a vehicle. The camps are becoming ever more crowded, with growing populations and limited opportunities for these refugees to make a life elsewhere. Most houses are designed to facilitate continued expansion upwards. They have unfinished flat roofs. At each corner juts out a square concrete pillar with rebar poking out at the centre, with the expectation that a new floor will be added in the future.
At street level sunlight is limited; facilities for children more so. Extracurricular activities and play spaces are much needed, but so difficult to deliver. And even if these families had the money to send their children away from the camps for activities, during the Second Intifada there was always the fear that the children may run into the Israeli military when it invaded the city or camps.
An average of 50 pupils per class, extremely crowded classes and little to do when school is not in session, the limited street space becomes a “play” area for many boys. The situation is worse for girls, who often remain confined to their cramped houses due to traditional social restrictions that are becoming tighter by the year. Many girls develop weak muscles and poor balance because of a lack of physical activity.
To make matters worse, the refugee camps have played host to the worst and most constant fighting of the Second Intifada. The children are universally traumatized. Many suffer sleep deprivation because they are afraid to sleep for fear of a military raid during the night.
The refugee camps, feel like some medieval ghettos, narrow alleyways, skirting an open sewage ditch. Tens of dozens of one or two-room houses each leaning on the other for support. Ghettos are without streets sidewalks gardens patios, trees, flowers plazas or shops—among an uprooted, stateless, scattered people who, like the Jews before them, are in a tragic Diaspora. Someone has said that for every Jew who was brought in to create a new state, a Palestinian Arab was uprooted and left homeless.
Dwellings are makeshift homes, a home that is only a room with a concrete floor and blankets stacked against the walls for beds. And, for a toilet, a closeted hole in the floor. Never knowing the convenience of a tub or a commode, nor does anyone enjoy that greatest of all luxuries, a room or even space into which one can for an hour or a few moments of each day retire, and in solitude meld mind, body, and soul. In over three decades, most men look twenty years older than their age, as they never been able to find themselves jobs, which is to say they have never been able to find a means to extricate themselves and their family from the slough of poverty and despondency in which they seem mired. They come home looking demeaned, brutalized. Separated from their land, they lose his sense of belonging and sense of self-worth. Separated from the “mother earth”—an expression the Palestinians repeatedly use-feels orphaned, alien, lost.
“I am on my feet all day, my legs ache, and my head aches from the smoke, fumes, and heat. I work fourteen hours a day to make enough to feed my family. My health, perhaps also my mind, is breaking from the strain. The camp produces one generation after another of people who are trapped.”
Such is the plight of the Palestinians, there are only 293 hospital beds available for all the refugees in all the West Bank camps—one for every thousand. And there is only one doctor for every ten thousand refugees.
We in the West are easily critical of those in refugee camps who have many children. Such families have few amenities and forms of recreation save perhaps, the finest of all—building a family and surviving through the strength of that family. The Diaspora of the Jews and their suffering in ghettos did not destroy their families. Neither has the Diaspora of the Palestinians and their suffering in refugee camps destroyed the strength and unity of their families.
In the overcrowded West Bank camps, it seems that when you live in the midst of regular chaos, you grow up before your age and need to learn to look after yourself very quickly. It is clear that living in West Bank refugee camps is not an easy thing. Nevertheless, for now, hope remains we need to keep doing our best to alleviate the suffering and improve the conditions of the future generation of Palestinians in the midst of all the complexity and chaos.
Palestine is a very poor country; Palestinians are almost totally dependent on external aids to survive. The situation in the Palestinian camps has struck starving point, taking into consideration the high fertility rate which reaches 7.5.
Currently Palestinians are in the worst financial crisis in its history. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics announced that 65% of the Palestinians under the poverty line, the majority of the Palestinian classified as a destitute cases, they are unable to meet their daily basic needs especially the food.
2. Project Details:
2.1 Title: Ramadan Iftar for 150 Refugees, Destitute, Aged, Handicapped, Unemployed, Widows and Orphans Penurious Palestinian Families.
2.2 Donor: The Lady Fatemah (A.S.) Charitable Trust-London.
2.3 Organization: HRS - Humanitarian Relief Society.
2.4 Authority: Registered Non-Government Organization in Palestine.
2.5 Address: Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine.
2.6 Contact person: Dr. Bassam Banat, president, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
, 00972 599 678 306.
2.7 Beneficiaries: Destitute, Aged, Handicapped, Unemployed, Widows and Orphans Penurious Palestinian Families in the West Bank.
2.8 Number of Beneficiaries: 150 needy families (150*8 persons=1200).
2.9 Date of the project: July 22-24, 2014.
2.10 Food package details for each family: 3 kilo of corn oil, 5 kilo of rice, 4 kilo of sugar, 5 kilo of semolina, 1 kilo of dates, and 1 kilo of tea.
3. Project process:
3.1 The HRS society announced about the project in the mosques of: Duhaisha refugee camp, Arroub refugee camp and Fawwar refugee camp.
3.2 Each family filled an application for the food which last for ten days.
3.3 All of the applications are evaluated in order to get the most 150 destitute families.
3.4 Each selected family received a capon from HRS to get the Iftar package.
3.5 The delivery of the food took place in different areas in the West Bank: Duhaisha refugee camp, Arroub refugee camp and Fawwar refugee camp in the period July 22- 24, 2014.
3.6 HRS covered the delivery of the food professionally, with accurate documentations (excel names list of the head of the family, his profession; number of members in the family; number of boys; number of girls in the family, photos, etc).
3.7 HRS uploaded the names on the LFT web post the delivery process.
4. Acknowledgment:
Upon the completion of this charity project and on behalf of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and the HRS board members I would like to extend my deepest thanks and appreciation to The Lady Fatemah (A.S.) Charitable Trust for their generous support for our sisters and brothers in Palestine.
It would be have been impossible to carry out this charity project without your generous support and kindness, may Allah bless you and reward you the Jana, Ameen. “inna lanudeeAAu ajra man ahsana AAamala” (We will not allow to be lost the reward of any who did well in deeds). Sadaga Allah Al Atheem.
With my deepest salaamas and duas,
Professor Bassam Banat.
President
