Scottish family kidnapped by Palestinians

A handout picture released by Palestinian rights group Al Mezan shows kidnapped Briton Kate Burton in Gaza December 29, 2005. Palestinian security officials hunted on Thursday for the human rights activist and her parents who were abducted in the Gaza Strip, but officials reported no immediate progress. REUTERS/Handout

Scotland Today:

Palestinian security chiefs are holding talks with the kidnappers of a young Scottish woman abducted at gunpoint on the Gaza Strip. Kate Burton from Glasgow was seized by gunmen in the town of Rafah.

At the centre where Kate Burton works colleagues not surprisingly are concerned, but they are not overly worried. Kate speaks Arabic well along with three other languages. She had been working for the United Nations in the region for about a year before joining the Al Mezan Human Rights Centre.

Jhada Snunu, from the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, said: "She was really very cooperative. She was helping the legal aid unit here in the centre, because she was dealing with the detainees in the Israeli jails."

Kidnappings are not uncommon in Gaza. Over one and a half million people live in what could be called the world's largest refugee camps.

Of course, if you live in a refugee camp, then it's understandable and acceptable that you kidnap people.

I don't know where the writer gets his figure of 1.5 million. Perhaps he is referring to UNRWA figures (as of 31 March 2005) which show a total of 1,259,813 registered refugees in all 59 camps (including ten in Jordan, twelve in Lebanon, ten in Syria and eight in the now-Palestinian-controlled-Gaza strip). The only Palestinian refugees in Israeli-controlled territory are some of the 181,241 in the disputed "West Bank." The other million-plus are in Arab-controlled territories.

Consequent to the Oslo accords, authority over 12 out of 19 camps in the "West Bank" passed to the Palestinian Authority. Thus, as I understand it, out of 59 Palestinian refugee camps, only seven are under Israel's security control. The other 52 are Arab-controlled.

Too bad the writer didn't know this information, or worse yet, didn't think it relevant.

What a mess. The UNRWA sports an annual budget of $339.3 million, but clearly states that it "does not run refugee camps." So who does? And why would the Arabs... Palestinian, Jordanian, Lebanese and Syrian... want these people in camps? Hmmm?