Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza strip

Abstract

community rushed in assistance and soon set up tent camps, distributed food and provided medical services to the refugees. This emergency aid alleviated their sufferings and probably saved many lives. In 1950 a new United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) took over. It gradually extended its range of services to other areas of life, such as education, social welfare, water and sanitation. It recruited temporary staff from among the refugees. Over the years its services became routinized and bureaucratic, and its staff grew and became entrenched. The result of UNRWA's activities is that now, more than forty years later, there are 2.2 million Palestinian refugees, of whom 770,000 live in refugee camps. They are cared for by 18,000 UNRWA employees (UNRWA News: 194). The 817,000 refugees living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are about 37 per cent of the total Palestinian refugee population; 339,000 of them (41 per cent) live in refugee camps. By taking a long-term view of the refugees living in the refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, I hope to show how the camps and UNRWA reached their present state. I shall argue that the camps have gradually become similar to other urban neighbourhoods and that their inhabitants are fully integrated in the region's economy. While UNRWA should thus have reduced the scope of its operation, it has, like so many other bureaucracies, altered its targets, grown in size and become a self-sustaining organization. This will go some way towards explaining why the number of refugees has grown over the years and why so many people live in 'refugee camps'. I will also raise the question of to what extent they are still refugees. Let me first present my credentials for discussing these complex and vexed issues. When Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, most Israelis believed that peace negotiations with the Arab