24 - 30 January 2002
Issue No.570
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 24 - 30 January 2002 Issue No.570 |
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Displaced Palestinians still unsettled
Half a century on, Palestinian refugees in Syria still live in desperate purgatory. Judit Neurink looks at a new project to settle some 300 refugee families in private housing
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN organisation for Palestinian refugees, will be building new homes for some 300 Palestinian families at the Neirab refugee camp in Syria -- with the full support of the Syrian government. It is a remarkable project, given that the policy in the region has never really been about encouraging its millions of Palestinian refugees to stay. In neighbouring Lebanon, Palestinian refugees are not allowed to live outside the 12 camps set up for them -- nor are they allowed to add any new buildings to them. But in Syria, the government agrees with the UNRWA that building new homes is the only solution to the poor conditions of Neirab Camp.
For the past 50 years, thousands of refugees (as of 1999, there were almost 17,000) have been living in the old army barracks that the allied forces erected near Aleppo during the Second World War. Of the 10 official UNRWA camps in Syria, Neirab is the biggest and the most primitive. Families of 10 live in small rooms separated by thin walls and without ventilation, light or privacy. The temperatures are scorching in summer and freezing in winter. In recent years, leaking roofs have been repaired, but more radical changes are needed to truly improve the camps' living conditions.
A rough piece of land from the nearby "unofficial" camp of Ein El-Tal will be used by UNRWA to build housing units for hundreds of families from Neirab. The small, whitewashed units will be built close together, but they will each have a kitchen, a toilet and a shower -- an unheard of luxury for the inhabitants of the Neirab barracks.
At the same time, sewers, roads and other water projects will be upgraded at Ein El-Tal. Trees will be planted and children's playgrounds will be developed in Neirab -- all in close cooperation with the Syrian government. "As a host country, we are in agreement with any project intended to help the Palestinian refugees until they are able to return to their homeland," says Ali Mustafa, director-general of Gapar, the Syrian authority for Palestinian refugees.
UNRWA is still looking for money from Western donors for the project, but has already started trying to convince Neirab residents to move to the new houses. This is not as easy as it would seem: many refugees are only willing to leave their houses if it means going back to their native country. An information centre in Neirab, with a model of the housing project and pictures of the units, has been set up to coax residents into making the move. Trips to Ein El-Tal will also be used to help convince residents of the advantages of moving there.
There are no rules or regulations that keep Palestinians in Syrian refugee camps. They have more or less the same rights as Syrians: they can go to school and university and have the right to vote. They can also be elected in local elections. Though they are free to live wherever they want, about a third of the almost 400,000 Palestinians in Syria live in the biggest unofficial camp of the country: Yarmouk, in Damascus.
The Palestinian writer Hamad Said Al-Mawed, who has lived in Yarmouk almost all of his life, blames poverty for the fact that so many Palestinians still live in camps. In an investigation into the history of Yarmouk Camp, Al-Mawed concludes: "The camps were for the poor. Rich refugees did not go there. Yarmouk is a mixed camp -- because here we also have poor Syrians."
Although Yarmouk is the largest "unofficial" camp and Neirab the largest "official" one, the camps could not be more different. In Yarmouk, the shacks with tin roofs have long since been replaced by three- or four-storey houses. They stand close together and are separated by dirt roads, but with its shops, mosques and even hospitals, Yarmouk could be just another district of Damascus. Al-Mawed agrees: "We have our own council. We have a very mixed community now: intellectuals, shopkeepers, businessmen, people working for the Syrian government. Incomes in Yarmouk are as varied as anywhere else in the country. The average Syrian family consists of six people -- and this goes for Yarmouk too." Even so, everyone in Syria still refers to Yarmouk as a camp, and not the district of Damascus that it has developed into.
Palestinians in Yarmouk still have one significant thing in common with those in Neirab: they all want to go back to the land they were forced to abandon in 1948 or during the turbulent years after. Al-Mawed, who was one of the first Palestinians in Syria to talk openly about peace with Israel, wants this matter on the table when peace talks restart -- which they will, eventually, he is sure. "Palestinian refugees should be given the right to decide for themselves whether they want to go back to the land of their family. I want to be able to say: I'm going back to Nazareth, where I was born -- or to decide that I'm staying here after all."
In the end, Al-Mawed expects that a lot of refugees will not return. But he stresses that they should at least have the choice. "And this goes for my children too, although they were born in Syria, and for their children after them."
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