The Ambassadors - OPINIONS - Vol.3, Issue 1 (January 2000)

October 11, 1999

My last night in the Middle East, when I was staying with Hagit Ra'anan near Tel Aviv, the phone rang and the director of the Askar Refugee Camp in the West Bank said, "Please ask Barbara to tell the world that we are here and that we invite the world to come to us. We cannot come to the world and so we ask that the world comes to us with its cultural exchanges in all fields, be it health, art, or whatever. All are welcome."

I visited Askar Camp and other camps in the West Bank with Hagit, and I tasted the hospitality of the people, and, yes, I assure you that the world will be gratefully welcomed.

What is a West Bank refugee camp?

I expected rows and rows of tents.
No. No tents.

The camps today look like towns or cities, a tight complex of drab apartment houses. To the untrained eye, there is nothing to indicate that they are refugee camps.

It is my understanding that the United Nations, which once provided medical, school, and other facilities, has largely pulled out, and so today many facilities are either lacking or are provided by non-government organizations. I am not an expert on this subject.

Who are the refugees?

Those who fifty years ago fled their homes located in the area now called Israel. They, their children, their children's children live in the camps that were set up for them.

They are stateless.

The Palestinians who live in the area of their camps on the West Bank consider these people to be Palestinian refugees, even though the majority of these refugees have been born in the West Bank.

The refugees are 'caught between the cracks'.

-----------

Hagit has taken me to three camps on the West Bank. At the first camp, Jenin camp, I learn there are actually two camps, the old one and the new one. Both look the same. An outsider would not know the difference between them, except there is a road, approximately one kilometer long, separating and joining them.

The old Jenin camp has a school for all the children. The children of the new camp walk to school via the road between the two camps. They contend with the cars and everything else on that road. Some are killed.

Hagit has suggested that volunteers go to Jerusalem to be trained in road safety for the children. This would seem easy enough to set up, but it is not easy. Camp volunteers need passes in order to cross zones before reaching Jerusalem. For clarity's sake, let us say that Jenin camp is in Zone A. In order to go to Jerusalem, one must pass through Zone C and then Zone B. Each zone has its requirements. For example, Zone C may be controlled by Israeli authorities, and Zone B may be controlled by Palestinian authorities. And so, in order for a refugee to go from Jenin Camp to Jerusalem, he needs passes to fit the requirements of the zones he will pass through.

As an aside, and to show the complexity of the situation, what amazed me was how the camp people talked about Israel in terms of an inaccessible country, such as a country thousands of miles away instead of five or ten miles away.

When I went to Gaza for a ceremony of a peace pole, I learned that some West Bank Palestinians I shared a bus with had never before seen the Mediterranean Sea, a two-hour drive from their homes. Until Hagit arranged for permits for them to come to Gaza for the peace pole ceremony, they had never had permits.

At this moment, for the first time ever, a road is being designated as a
passageway through Israel between the West Bank and Gaza which will enable Palestinians to travel cross Israel without a special permit.

You see the complexity of the situation in the Middle East? Barriers. Permits. Papers.

As for the road between the new and old Jenin Camps, which the new camp children use to reach their school, can anyone suggest a solution to this problem? If so, contact Hagit. I will put her email address at the bottom of this report.

Does anyone want to take up my stop-gap suggestion? Each child carries a tall stick with a colorful flag at the top. Surely this would warn the drivers to take care.

And yet there is need to teach the children road safety. In the camps there are no sidewalks, and so when the children leave their homes, they are immediately in the streets contending with traffic. I have seen a two-year old child run out of his house and into the street without thinking about cars. For him, cars are a natural part of his scenery. When he runs out of his house, he is among them.

At Askar Camp (with a population of thousands), I learn there is no clinic. If someone becomes ill at night, his illness must wait until morning. There is a hospital four kilometers away for anyone who can get there. In general, refugees don't have cars.

I wonder what help is given to women who go into labor in the early hours of the morning.

At Askar Camp, I talked with a doctor who trained nine years in Moscow. He wants to specialize in research of children's diseases, but there is no opportunity where he lives. If he is to train, he will need to go somewhere else, such as to Canada. If anyone has ideas about how he can continue his training, please contact Hagit. By the way, the status of this fine, intelligent man is stateless, refugee.

One takes for granted that one will have the nationality and papers of the land of one's birth. Well, I now realize that some people can be born and live in a land and have no nationality or papers!

At Askar Camp, there is a Women's Center, as well as a place with new computers. The children need computer training.

In Gaza, I visited a Red Crescent rehabilitation center giving people with disabilities an opportunity to learn how to make handicrafts that can be sold. The director says that 5,000 out of 100,000 people in Gaza are handicapped, a huge portion of the population. There is need for help with the blind, the deaf, those who have lost limbs.

Barbara Wolf is the co-ordinator of Global Meditations Network whose purpose is to help 'shrink' the world by sending news from here and there so people can realize that all have similar thoughts and concerns, that all are brothers no matter where they live. Familiarity reeds tolerance, then love and understanding, and this leads to peace.
Her computer is based in the United States, her email address is bjwolf@rochester.infi.net, and her web site is http://www.globalmeditations.com