The devastating Israeli army incursions into the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin left an estimated 100 of the residents dead, with some still buried in the rubble. Tanks and bulldozers gutted cinderblock homes and flattened buildings in the West Bank camp. Droves of Palestinians fled Israel’s tough attack aimed to smash the infrastructure of terrorism.
It is pitifully ironic that these fleeing refugees, most the children and grandchildren of Palestinian refugees from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, should be made refugees from a refugee camp.
If ever there was a place that bred hopelessness and despair, the Jenin camp is it. The suicide bomber who last week killed herself and six Israelis in a Jerusalem market, wounding more than 80 others, came from the camp.
A combination of cynical decisions by Arab leaders and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip–land destined to be the presumed Palestinian state–have kept nearly 4 million Palestinians registered as United Nations refugees, a third of them living in such camps. They numbered only 800,000 in 1948, but they and their descendents have multiplied–living under UN care longer than any other group of the world’s dispossessed peoples.
Few slices of humanity are as wretched. Imagine families living in these desperate camps for three or four generations.
How to resolve their plight was one of two issues that deadlocked the Camp David summit in July 2000. The other was disputed Jerusalem.
Refugees have settled in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, as well as neighboring Arab states such as Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. But those Arab nations have not fully assimilated them into their societies. Why? To keep the Palestinian cause alive as a thorn in Israel’s side.
Jordan has done the most to help the refugees move on. Palestinians have served as prime ministers there. But Palestinians themselves have frequently resisted outside efforts to improve their camps–never wanting them to become too comfortable lest they turn into permanent abodes. Thus, the camps lack infrastructure like proper electricity, reliable running water and decent sewage treatment.
Yes, it is cynical to use peoples’ misery as a political bargaining chip. But Arab nations–and the Palestinian leaders–have done just that.
The first generation of refugees is starting to pass on, along with their dreams of returning to their old homes. Some still have keys to those houses in Israeli towns like Haifa, Ramleh or Jaffa. Those houses–that is, the ones still standing–are occupied by Israelis now. So older refugees pass their memories on to their children, who carry on the cycle of anger, the endless dreams of return and the thirst for revenge.
Even before the last three weeks of Israeli incursions into West Bank towns and villages, the plight of the refugees in Jenin and other camps was pretty much a living horror. Now Israel has decimated the Jenin refugee camp, home to 13,000 people. The assault by Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships left rotting corpses, piles of rubble 30 feet high and homes with their facades ripped off by bulldozers downtown.
Palestinians cry that this was a massacre, a war crime. There were initial claims that hundreds of innocents died. Yet, when aid workers and journalists finally made their way into the camp, the first scrutiny failed to turn up evidence to confirm such charges.
This much has been confirmed, though: Scores of Palestinian gunmen from different factions made a last stand, booby-trapped buildings and killed 23 Israeli soldiers in the battles in narrow alleyways.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has vowed to crush the infrastructure of terror, and his effort to strike out against savage suicide bombers and those who send them to murder Israeli civilians is understandable. The battle in Jenin was part of that effort.
Israel won the battle. Where Sharon has failed, however, is to couple his military tactics with a credible political strategy that could offer Israel and the Palestinians a chance for a peace. And while the military battle in Jenin has ended, the rhetorical battle has started.
The Jenin camp has been devastated. Two thirds of the population of the camp were children, women and the elderly. Now they search for water, food and shelter. The interiors of homes are exposed to the elements where their crushed facades were removed. Bomb craters and bullet holes are everywhere.
Arabs are calling this the “Palestinian Stalingrad” and using it to rally support for the demands of besieged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that Israel pull out of the occupied territories for good. Even one Israeli general has called it the “Palestinian Masada,” after the suicidal last stand of Jewish fighters against Roman soldiers on a mountaintop in A.D. 73.
And so, inevitably, we get back to the persistent and seemingly intractable issues that prevent peace in the Middle East. One of them is how to solve the refugee crisis.
Israelis insist that if 4 million Palestinian refugees return to Israel, they will radically alter the Jewish state’s demographics, eventually tipping the state into an Arab majority. They are absolutely correct, and Palestinians who harbor the notion of a massive return are clinging to a dream that will not be fulfilled.
A settlement might permit the return of a limited number of refugees, perhaps elderly Palestinians. The rest could be resettled in a Palestinian state or compensated with Western and Arab funds and resettled in Arab nations, North America and Europe.
Such an agreement, though, seems a long, long way off.
The absurdity of the refugees’ plight and its deadly consequences are now typified by the Jenin camp. It has been the refuge of suicide bombers, and by virtue of Israel’s attempt to root out terror, it is now destined to be a symbol of Palestinian rage.
Secretary of State Colin Powell didn’t visit Jenin on his peace mission. It would have been worth the trip, though, if only to see the entire cycle of violence, rage, and political stalemate contained in one little corner of hell.
