The Situation of Palestinian Refugees Research Paper

The Situation of Palestinian Refugees - Research Paper Example The state of the Palestinian refugees has been extremely politically charged with no nation ever giving them citizenship and has therefore resulted in a second generation of refugees. As seen below the solution to this fifty-year problem is not a simple one. The history of Palestinian refugees can be traced back to 1948 during the period of the Israel–Arab war. The nation of Israel had been approved by the United Nation through a vote but was strongly voted against by the Arab community. This resulted in the Arab Israeli war which Israel won and thus expelled the majority Arab community that had lived in the area resulting in the original refugees. The Israel government has however never accepted that they expelled any Arabs insisting instead that they voluntarily fled the areas. This discrepancy in the origin story of the refugees is one of the problems that they face as no government has accepted responsibility over their plight (Morris 20). There is however documented proof that Muslims were expelled from the area however they were allowed to take their property as they left. Villagers in areas such as Samara and Nuqeib were pushed to move out of their villages through marginalization by the police and were also encouraged through economic incentives to move to Syria (Morris 513). The United Nation Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) began to focus on the plight of the Palestine refugees from 1950 estimating the refugees to be seven hundred thousand when they were expelled from Israel. Their attempts in the beginning were towards a possible reintegration of the refugees in other parts of the Arab world including Lebanon and Egypt. This however failed as the governments and the locals did not support the move. UNRWA thus focused on improving the living standards of refugees in Palestine and offered basic education and sanitation services. The UN was the only body that did put effort in improving the refugee situation with middle eastern nations stating tha t the refugees should go back to reintegrate with modern Israel (Milagny 80). The nation of Egypt was a prosperous nation in the 1940s – 1950s the nation had opened the Suez Canal and benefitted from the cotton trade to become one of the more prosperous nations in Africa. The wealthy Palestinians who arrived first were able to get themselves good housing in the more serene areas of Egypt through both legal and illegal means but the poor Palestines had to contend with living in the camps. Egypt was itself struggling with its overpopulation problem and so decided it would be better if a portion of the population would remain in Gaza which Egypt controlled and with themselves financing its upkeep (Oroub 40). The Egyptian government did not however respond positively to the new immigrants and enacted policies that prevented them from getting jobs and also prevented them from working altogether. The prevention from sources of income meant that even the wealthy Palestinians were so on unable to have a source of income and lost whatever savings they had. Egypt ensured that the Gaza strip was constantly under strict military rule while Jordan did the same with West Bank where it assisted with security. It wasn’t until in 1967 when Israel took control of the Gaza strip that the situation in it improved considerably (Oroub 41). These policies led to increased crime committed in Egypt by Palestinians for economic reasons and just as many were jailed for these atrocities. The hostility shown by the Syrian government towards the refugees and the hostility that the Arab world has shown to the Jewish