As horrific as life has been for Palestinians since the imposition of the Jewish State of Israel, many have tried to make the best of their situation however humanly possible.

One such project is the Ibdaa Cultural Center located at the Dheisheh Refugee Camp. Ibdaa means "to create something out of nothing." As is specified on their web site: the Ibdaa Cultural Center is a grassroots initiative of the Dheisheh Refugee Camp. Founded in 1995, Ibdaa serves over 1,200 children and young people annually through various programs, while providing job opportunities to over 25 families in the camp.

Ibdaa's mission is to provide an environment for the camp's children and young people to develop their abilities, creativity and leadership skills through social, cultural and educational activities not otherwise available.

Ibdaa strives to empower children and instill in them the confidence and strength necessary to face up to their difficult future, while educating the international community about the Palestinian refugee issue. We invite you to visit the Ibdaa Cultural Center web site to learn more about this extraordinary group of very courageous, and quite talented people!

Another such initiative is Save the Children UK's Web Project Eye to Eye. Read an article by UK Independent Columnist Robert Fisk on Eye to Eye.

More information on Life in a Palestinian Refugee Camp can be found at the United Nations UNRWA Web Site.

Earliers on Wednesday morning, troops attacked, searched and ransacked several houses in the city of Hebron ,and the nearby Al Arroub refugee camp, and took three residents prisoners including a mother of five children.

Inass Shaheen, 33, she was taken from here house in Hebron city, Mohamed Abu Shikha, 16, and Mohamed Abu Ghazi, 21, from the Al Arroib refugee camp, all three were taken to unknown locations.

In Bethlehem city, Lou'ai Hlish, 27, was taken prisoner from his home located in Aida refugee camp in the northern side of Bethlehem, when troops invaded the camp and searched a number oh houses there, local sources reported.

The lawyer, Hasan Ghanyim, headed to the municipality to void the demolishing order, but the army did not want to wait until legal documents are presented, and started demolishing the house.

Ghanyim manged to obtain an order from Jerusalem Municipality to spare the house, but it had already been leveled by the soldiers who refused to wait for any legal procedures.

The family received a bill to pay from the municipality requiring them to pay "the expenses of leveling their home".

The house was a 150 square-meter, it included three bedrooms, and one living room; the Ghalia family moved to their house three months ago.

In a separate attack, soldiers leveled another house, which is still under construction, in Ras Al Amoud area in East Jerusalem.

The 180 square-meter building was officially licensed by the Jerusalem municipality, but again soldiers did not wait to see the licence and legal documents.

The demolished house costed the family 180.000 NIS in construction expenses.

The Al Quds Center in Jerusalem said that 42 Palestinian houses were leveled in Jerusalem since the beginning of 2006.

Palestinian living in Jerusalem are facing what became known as silent deportation from the city since the municipality is not allowing them to construct new houses or modify the houses they are living in, while settlements, constructed on Palestinian annexed properties, are expanding and wrapping the city from all sides.

But the villagers have nowhere to go to. They lived on the outskirts of the Bedouin town of Laqia, the old folk paid for plots of land to build homes in the 1970s, they still hold on the receipt, hoping someday to receive the plots. For the last 30 years they have been living on land belonging to others, in shacks, the housing becoming ever more crowded, until there was no room left for another baby. They turned to the government for a solution - the option for joining the rest of the residents of Laqia, in a regular house, on a regular plot of land. But the authorities had no options for them. The owners of the land on which they were living requested that they leave - 30 years is enough. So eventually they left back to their own ancestral land - only a couple of miles south of Laqia - by the old ruined school, by their old cemetery. The adult sons built their old mother a modest brick home. The rest built tin shacks.

A year ago the government came and destroyed several houses - including the brick home. Some of the people of Twail Abu Jarwal rebuilt, some moved into more crowded homes with their adult siblings. The government came nine months later and demolished seven more homes. Again, some rebuilt their shacks, some moved in with family. The government came back last month and just to harass, uprooted fences, holding the sheep. And now they came in order to make sure the work is complete.

Israel's Minister of Interior, Roni Bar-On, two days ago was invited to give answers to the Internal Affairs Committee in the Knesset, as to what solutions the government is advancing in order to solve the issue of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev, and why the government is demolishing homes while these people have no "legal" options for building homes. Bar-On claimed that everything is just fine, he is doing all he can to deal with this issue, but a criminal must be punished, and therefore all the "illegal" Bedouin homes in the Negev must be demolished. He claimed that as far as he is concerned, there are not enough demolitions in the Negev. And now he has proved that he is a man of his word - 17 homes demolished in one foul swoop.

Of the 150,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel living in the Negev, over 50% live in villages that the government as policy has left "unrecognized", meaning that there are no options for building permits, as well as running water, electricity, roads, sewer systems and trash removal, additionally there are very minimal education and health facilities. This policy's aim is to force the Bedouins off their ancestral lands and to concentrate the Bedouins in urban townships, regardless of their wishes or their culture. However, there are also no options for living in the concentration towns the government has built, as there are no available plots of land for homes, as in the case of the families of the Twail abu-Jarwal village. Therefore the government can "legally" demolish the homes of 80,000 members of this community, while they cannot build one "legal" home.

We need help! Both financial and political.

# Please donate to help the people of the village re-build their homes (tin shacks that stand as homes...) Checks can be sent to RCUV - al Awna Fund (the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages), POBox 10002, Beer Sheva, zipcode 84105, ISRAEL.

# Please write to your representatives! And tell of the quiet and brutal demolitions of homes and lives in the Israeli Negev, demand that they do something about it.


The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages is an NGO and was created in 1997 as the representative body for the residents of the 45 Bedouin unrecognized villages in the Israeli Negev. Hssein al-Rafaia is the elected head of the RCUV. For more information, please contact Yeela Raanan, 054 7487005, or via email at yallylivnat@gmail.com, Civil Society Activities Coordinator, Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages.

In a new escalation of Israel's policy of denying Palestinians and their families access to the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), the Israeli Civil Administration at Beit El is refusing to accept at least 140 passports for visa extensions. The passport holders are mostly spouses and children of Palestinian I.D.-holders and are residing in the oPt. Many of them have been forced to become "illegal" since their visitor visas have expired while waiting to be renewed by Israel.

Twenty-seven-year-old Subha G is one of these cases. Her mother, brothers and her husband all have Palestinian IDs, but her request for family reunification has been frozen since 1997. "I am seven months pregnant and I am afraid of leaving to renew my visa and becoming stranded outside the country. My whole family is here." Subha said. Palestinian IDs can only be issued by Israel. Since Israel is refusing to process an estimated 120,000 family unification residency applications of spouses and children of Palestinians, foreign family members must renew their visa every three months. All foreign spouses and children of Palestinians who requested visa extensions in October had their passports returned from Beit El on November 19th stamped "Last permit." The passport holders are required to leave the country before their visas expire, which in some cases occurred during Israel's processing of the visa extension application. Israeli authorities are regularly denying entry to family members of Palestinians when they attempt to cross the Israeli controlled borders to the Israeli oPt.

Soha N., a French citizen, lives in Beit Jala with her Palestinian husband and their two children, ages six and eight years old. The Israeli authorities refuse to issue residency to Soha and her children. Therefore, they have been renewing their visas every three months. After applying in October for another visa extension, they received their passports back marked "last permit." Soha's final extension lasts until December 25th. Israeli authorities required her two children to leave by December 4th. The family may now be forced to relocate abroad, as their children are now considered "illegal" after overstaying their visas. Shlomo Dror, spokesperson for the Israeli Civil Administration states that those foreign passport holders with family in the oPt who stay illegally in the country, should expect "tough consequences."

"Israel is working overtime to create a demographic change in the oPt by targeting the most vulnerable segment of Palestinian society, denying them residency and forcing them to leave," said Basil Ayish, a spokesperson from the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt. "Palestinian residency holders are likely to follow their spouses and children to another country in order to stay together," Ayish explained.

How did Israel expel Palestinians from their land?

Jewish terrorist groups such as Haganah, Irgun and Stern terrorized the Palestinian street, destroyed villages and slaughtered entire Palestinian families. Thirty four massacres were documented by Zionist historian Benny Morris to have occured within a few months: Al-Abbasiyya, Beit Daras, Bir Al-Saba', Al-Kabri, Haifa, Qisarya. These attacks were part of Plan Dalet and aimed to annihilate the Palestinian population. Approxiamtely 50% of all Palestinian villages were destroyed in 1948 and many cities were cleared from their Palestinian population including Akka, Bir Al-Saba', Bisan, Lod, Al-Majdal, Nazareth, Haifa, Tabaria, Yaffa, and West-Jerusalem among others.

Israeli forces killed an estimated 13,000 Palestinians and forcibly evicted 737,166 Palestinians from their homes and land. Five hundred and thirty one Palestinian villages were entirely depopulated and destroyed.

The tragedy of the refugees continued in 1967. That year, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and many Palestinians were uprooted for the second time. The refugees found shelter in surrounding countries including Jordan, Syria and Egypt.

How many Palestinian refugees are there today?

Palestinians are the largest and longest suffering group of refugees in the world. One in three refugees world wide is Palestinian. There are about 7.2 million Palestinian refugees worldwide. More than 4.3 million Palestinian refugees and their descendents displaced in 1948 are registered for humanitarian assistance with the United Nations. Another 1.7 million Palestinian refugees and their descendents, also displaced in 1948, are not registered with the UN. About 355,000 Palestinians and their descendents are internally displaced i.e. inside present-day "Israel". When the West Bank and Gaza Strip were occupied in 1967, the UN reported that approximately 200,000 Palestinians fled their homes. These 1967 refugees and their descendants today number about 834,000 persons. As a result of house demolition, revocation of residency rights and construction of illegal settlements on confiscated Palestinian owned-land, at least 57,000 Palestinians have become internally displaced in the occupied West Bank. This number includes 15,000 people so far displaced by the construction of Israel's Annexation Wall. Such dispossession of the Palestinian population continues today.

Where do Palestinian refugees reside today?

The majority of Palestinian refugees live not far from their homes of origin either in their own homeland or in neighboring countries. More than half the refugee population lives in Jordan. Approximately 37.7% live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, comprising about 50 percent of the population in those areas. About 15% live in almost equal numbers in Syria and Lebanon. About 355,000 internally displaced Palestinians reside in present-day Israel. The remaining refugee population lives throughout the world, including the rest of the Arab world. Of the 4.3 million refugees registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 33% live in UNRWA's 59 refugee camps throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

What are the basic rights of refugees?

According to international law, refugees have the right to return to their homes of origin, receive real property restitution, and compensation for losses and damages. The UN General Assembly set forth the framework for resolving the Palestinian refugee case in UN Resolution 194 (III) which provides: repatriation for those refugees "wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors," or compensation for those choosing not to return. On November 22, 1974, Resolution 3236 clarified the right to return as an "inalienable right". In Res. 302 (IV), the UN General Assembly created UNRWA and assigned the agency the task of caring for Palestinian refugees. UNRWA defined Palestinian refugees as persons who resided in Palestine two years prior to the outbreak of hostilities in 1948 and who lost their homes and livelihoods as a result of that war.

Why are Palestinian refugees excluded from coverage under UNHCR's mandate?

When the UN adopted the Refugee Convention and established the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, it excluded those falling within the UNRWA mandate from coverage under UNHCR's mandate. In effect, this has meant that UNHCR does not concern itself with (or count) Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, or the West Bank and Gaza Strip, although the agency assists Palestinian refugees outside the UNRWA-mandate area. Although unintended, the effect has been that Palestinian refugees have enjoyed fewer protections than other refugees because UNRWA only has a mandate to provide Palestinian refugees with humanitarian assistance, and, unlike UNHCR, does not have a specific protection mandate.

Is something being done to rectify this exclusion?

Since the beginning of the last Palestinian uprising, the UN Commission on Human Rights, the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, and some independent refugee experts have argued that the fact that many Palestinian refugees lack effective protection should trigger the applicability of the UN Refugee Convention to Palestinians in the UNRWA mandate area. These organizations and individuals cite Article 1D of the Refugee Convention, which effectively states that whenever protection or assistance for Palestinian refugees has ceased for any reason before their situation is resolved in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions, they shall "be entitled to the benefits of this Convention." Proponents of this view contend that UNHCR should have begun to exercise its protection mandate for Palestinian refugees long ago when it became clear that the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine, which was concerned with protection for Palestinians, was unable to carry out its responsibilities.

Why have Palestinian refugees not returned to their homes?

The state of Israel refuses to allow Palestinian refugees to exercise their natural, legal and historic right to return citing three main arguments; first, that there is no space in Israel for the refugees to return, second, that the return of Palestinian refugees would threaten security and lead to conflict, and finally, that the return of the refugees would jeopardize the Jewish nature of the state. With regards to the first argument, recent research shows that 80% of the Jewish population of present-day 'Israel' resides on 15% of the land. The areas where Palestinian villages were demolished lie mainly uninhabited. Hence there is space. As for security concerns, Palestinian refugees broadly accept that exercising their right to return would not be based on the eviction of Jewish citizens but on the principles of equality and human rights. The final argument though is a testament to Israel's false claim that it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is a democracy for Jews only, and this religion-based discrimination or oxymoron should not be confused with real democracy.

Is there a durable solution?

There can be no comprehensive solution without honoring the rights of Palestinian refugees. Three UN human rights treaty committees have found key aspects of Israel's nationality, citizenship, and land legislation which effectively bar Palestinian refugees from exercising their inalienable right to return to be incompatible with the rights codified in relevant human rights conventions. Israel's ongoing aggression against the Palestinian people and continued pursuit of population transfer are incompatibel with the quest for peace.

Sources:

Adapted from The Palestinian Dispossession - Frequently Asked Questions
May 15, 2003 By MIFTAH

Badil Resource Center for Refugee Rights
Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding
Shaml - Palestinian Diaspora and Refugee Center
United Nations Relief and Works Agency
U.S. Committee for Refugees

Israel Radio's Arabic service quoted sources close to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as saying that the committee recommended break-up of the Hamas-led government and formation of a transitional government and set March 2007 as the time to hold parliamentary elections.

There was no official comment from Hamas, which would consider the recommendation as non-binding.

Members of the PLO have been meeting in Ramallah for three days to find out a legal solution to end a political crisis after months of talks failed to come up with a deal.

Meanwhile, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters in Ramallah that it was too early to reach conclusions on what options Abbas could take.

He said that Abbas will chair an expanded meeting with members of the PLO Executive Committee next week to prepare for a speech on solutions.

Bush was even more explicit in his letter, saying "it seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refuges there, rather than in Israel."

Prodi's comments were made during a meeting in which the ground rules were that the content of statements would not be made public, so that the participants could speak freely.

Addressing ways to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Prodi said there was a need to provide security assurances to Israel, but that more importantly there was a need to give Israel a guarantee that it "would be able to maintain its Jewish character."

The Italian Embassy had no comment on the remarks.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who in his Sde Boker speech last week called on Palestinians to "relinquish your demand for the realization of the right of return," is scheduled to meet with Prodi next Wednesday during a three-day European visit to Berlin and Rome.

Israel has long argued that if Palestinian refugees and their descendants were allowed to move to Israel, it would tip the demographic balance in favor of the Arabs and lead to the demise of the Jewish state.

Prodi's comments came at a meeting during which he also raised the idea of expanding the European role at the Rafah border crossing to include the entire Philadelphi Corridor if both Israel and the Palestinians agreed. He also said that now was not necessarily the time for large-scale Middle East peace conferences, as some have recommended recently in Europe, but rather for confidence building measures by both sides.

Senior diplomatic officials in Jerusalem said Prodi's comments about the need to provide guarantees that Israel would remain a Jewish state were "very significant," because if European leaders talk about the right of Israel to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people, "they are by definition rejecting the idea of a Palestinian right of return."

"It is important to get everyone on the same page on this," one official said. "If this point were agreed upon by the international community, then it could be possible to begin dealing with finding permanent solutions for the refugees without waiting for a final status agreement."

A public European declaration along these lines would represent a significant shift in European policy, the official added.

Another official, however, said it was very unlikely that Prodi, or any other European leader, would repeat his comments in public or come out with a declaration similar to Bush's, because of the waves it would cause in the Arab world.