Condoleezza Rice & the Great Middle East Housing Irony

On Monday Condi Rice was in Israel, "on the rampage" against the Jewish state for daring to suggest that they might build homes for themselves in Jerusalem, their capital city.

The Very Next Day, she's in Lebanon, telling their Prime Minister that

"the United States looks forward to attending the conference in Vienna for the reconstruction of Nahr el-Bared."

Housing for Jews in the capital city of the State of Israel - to be built and paid for by themselves, without a penny of international aid - is considered the Greatest Obstacle to Peace in the region -- but the United States "looks forward to" promoting and and helping to finance the (re)construction of a palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

Okay, maybe it's more of a simple Double Standard than a Great Irony, but either way it's a shocking display of official American prejudice. And there's big bucks behind it.

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Before I go any further, I have to thank my friend and colleague Rick Richman for handing me this story. He's the watchman who spotted it; I never would have noticed.
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So now that we're aware of it, let's see what we can find in the way of further edification.

First, you will all remember this particular palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon because it was the site of a great battle last year between a terrorist militia called Fatah al Islam and the Lebanese army. The fighting started in May, but the nation's army did not emerge victorious until September.

One Lebanese commentator described Fatah al Islam as "a small group of radical Islamic militants of various nationalities," but in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee (April 15, 2008) Condi called them "al-Qaida-linked terrorists."

Whatever they were, they were bombarded by the Lebanese army to the extent that Condi referred to the aftermath at the camp as "near-complete destruction."

A mass of gray crumpled buildings and mangled concrete is all what is left from the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared in Tripoli, Lebanon Friday, Sept. 7, 2007. The government's three-month battle to drive the militant Fatah Islam group out of the camp is over, but thousands of Palestinians who fled the fighting worry they will never be allowed back to their homes. AP Photo/Grace Kassab via Jewish Current Issues.

So you're wondering why you should care. Well, I'm afraid it's your tax dollars at work again. Brace yourselves, because "your world" - under the auspices of the UNRWA and with the United States in the lead, as usual- is going to rebuild Nahr el-Bared.

The very next day after she rebuked Israel for building apartments in Jerusalem, Condoleezza Rice told the Lebanese government that "the United States looks forward to attending the conference in Vienna." What she didn't say is that this another international donor conference, and it's your money she'll be spending there. [Remember Paris?]

In a statement to the "NBC Donor Conference Preparatory Meeting" in Beirut June 9th, the UNRWA Commissioner-General stated that

.... The conflict in Nahr el Bared last year left thousands of people without homes and without livelihoods. The humantiarian response thus far

[see for example June '07 "Flash Appeal" for $12.7 million and September's "Emergency Appeal" for $55 million]

would not have been possible without the generous contributions you promptly offered.

[including $10,100,000 from the U.S. announced by the State Department immediately following the "destruction."]

Reconstruction of the camp will likewise depend on your financial assistance...

We have a responsibility to help the inhabitants of Nahr el Bared rebuild their lives. We have done our best to provide them with temporary assistance. Now, we must rebuild their camp homes and communities and set them on the path of improving their lives.

Even prior to the destruction of the camp, living conditions in Nahr el Bared were unacceptable, the camp having been a much too densely populated areas. We intend to ensure that Nahr el Bared is rebuilt in a manner that marks a dramatic improvement: better infrastructure, better ventilation, better roads – ultimately an environment that contributes to the stability and prosperity of Lebanon.

.... We are under no illusions about the difficulties of the task ahead. Reconstructing Nahr el Bared camp will be the largest single project UNRWA has ever undertaken.

Dear Gd in Heaven, save us.

You won't see any of this in your local paper, so check out "Ya Libnan," June 12th: UNRWA will ask for $450 [million] to rebuild north Lebanon camp.

Before we go nuts counting the hundreds of gazillions of dollars that have gone for 60 years - and continue to go - to the poorpalestinian "refugees," let's back up for a minute and review the matter of Lebanon's palestinian refugee camps in general.

In a post called The Apartheid State in the Middle East Rick Richman quoted from The New York Review of Books:

'Lebanon's Agony'

... descendants of Palestinian refugees are barred from living anywhere in Lebanon but in slum-like refugee "camps," cannot hold decent jobs, are barred from citizenship (and thus cannot vote or hold office), are barred from Lebanon's universities, are even barred from holding property, and, as noncitizens, even have a hard time getting passports.

Sixty years after their grandparents fled the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, Palestinians in Lebanon are in many ways worse off than blacks were under South African apartheid.

I look back and see in one of my earliest posts, in October 2003, how amazed I was to learn that at that time, 62% of poorpalestinian "registered refugees" were in "camps" in ARAB countries: 12 camps in Lebanon and 10 each in Syria and Jordan. Since the Gaza strip is now Jew-free, we can add to that the 8 camps in Hamas-controlled Gaza, for a total of FORTY (40) palestinian refugee camps on Arab turf (and only 19 under the "control" of Israel in the so-called "West Bank").

Using the most recent figures (2005) from the UNRWA, it's easy math to find that now, 83.8% of "palestinian refugees" (3,567,578 out of the total 4,255,120) are in Arab lands.

And here's the scariest part. After sixty years, there's no plan to ever change their status. The UNRWA even admits as much on their website:

Tell me this is not disgusting:

On the 20th of June the world will turn their eyes to the plight of refugees, commemorating World Refugee Day, a day not only for Palestinian refugees but also for other nations whose lives are disrupted by war and injustice. However, it is a special day for Palestinians who are forever refugees, sentenced to remain dispersed around the world, barred from returning to their homeland.

I am a Palestinian refugee. My parents as well as my grandparents are refugees, having fled from our homeland Al Majdal to settle in one of the eight refugee camps where UNRWA operates in the Gaza Strip.

My grandparents passed away 15 years ago without being able to see their homeland again. My parents are old and sick now and will likely face the same fate.

Examining the difficult lives of my parents and grandparents, I have no hope for the future my children and I endure as refugees.

60 years have passed since 1948 and we the Palestinians are still called refugees. Being identified as a refugee, in general, and as a Palestinian refugee, in particular, renders you bereft of the ability to plan for the future.

Instead, you are relegated to knowing only the same existence as that of your ancestors, who lived and died in the same camp, under the same circumstances. You face the same sufferings and injustice by the Israeli occupation as they did.

Expecting to have the same life as your parents and grandparents is very disappointing in the sense that every aspect of your life is wholly predictable: You are limited to the same streets, the same schools and to experiencing the same obstacles by the Israeli occupation.

When your life is predictable, plans, dreams and even successes are irrelevant. In the end, your life will be the same: Trapped in a camp where day blurs into night.

It is very difficult to feel that your life is being wasted, that your efforts will not bring forth any changes in yours or in the lives of others and that your dreams will be but a mere attempt to escape reality.

From one generation to another, nothing has changed. An education or a career is nothing as long as you are a refugee stranded in the same camp confines, forever a refugee.

Therefore, “refugee” should be added to the list of citizenships in the world and the word “refugee” should be in our passports to define the stateless, restless and endless journey we have to endure, forever refugees.

So now, with one of the 59 camps destroyed, "your world" is not going to raze the site and build real homes for the people of Nahr el Bared; they're going to REBUILD the refugee camp. This way, the 4th generation of refugees can feel just as "trapped in a camp where day blurs into night" as the three previous generations. And you're going to pay for it.

It's beyond insane.

"Starting the rubble removal is an important step in our plans to reconstruct Nahr el Bared camp and it should indicate to Palestine refugees and to the wider world how committed UNRWA and the Lebanese Government are to returning the displaced population to their home," said Director of UNRWA Affairs in Lebanon, Richard J. Cook.

Now if only the UNRWA and the Lebanese Government (and the American Government) really were committed to returning displaced people to actual homes, this would be a good thing... even if decades late. But what they are actually committed to is staying in the flourishing multi-mega-gazillion-dollar refugee business. Forever.

That's why they're rebuilding Nahr el Bared Refugee Camp. With your tax money.

And Condi's looking forward to it.

Aren't you?

So mark your calendars:

Day after tomorrow is World Refugee Day

The United Nations General Assembly designated 20 June 2000 as World Refugee Day to recognize and celebrate the contribution of refugees throughout the world.

And on Monday, we'll turn the tables in Vienna... to recognize and celebrate contributions to refugees.

You won't want to miss any of this, so stay tuned.

Mozart statue, Burggarten, Vienna. Photo by pirano.

Comments

[Ashan]

This is a must-read article! Amazing post. The US should remove itsself from the lousy UN and throw it out of NYC.