The Homeless

THE MIDDLE EAST The Homeless For nearly a decade, the most sensitive political ganglion in the strife-racked body of the Middle East has been the problem of the Arab refugees from Palestine. In tents and makeshift camps around Israel's borders from Gaza to Aleppo, they have lived--nearly 1,000,000 of them--in squalor and bitterness. Israel stubbornly refuses to take them back. The Arab countries just as stubbornly refuse to resettle them, on the grounds that this would be accepting defeat at the hands of Israel.

Thus rejected by friend and foe alike, suspicious of any talk of compromising their rights to return to their homes in Israel, the refugees are ready emotional tinder for the incendiary troublemaking of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser.

For five years Nasser has made the most of them. He appointed himself their champion, and his picture was in every refugee tent and barracks. His Voice of the Arabs blared from loudspeakers in every camp. Greatest potentiality for trouble was in Jordan, where more than 500,000 refugees, together with 500,000 Palestinian Arabs living in the area of Palestine that Jordan had annexed after the 1948 war, outnumbered the original Bedouins of King Hussein two to one. When Nasser called to them, they erupted into the streets, hurling stones at U.S. consulates, attacking U.N. warehouses, battling police. Last year Nasser-incited riots forced Hussein to dismiss Britain's Glubb Pasha, and at the sprawling refugee camp at Aqabat Jabr (pop. 32,000), some 100 were killed.

Last week the Middle East's biggest news was negative: for two weeks Nasser had shrieked his loudest to incite the refugees to riot against Jordan's King Hussein, and for two weeks the refugees had ignored him. In Aqabat Jabr the camp was quiet as a mosque at noon. The police force on duty (one sergeant, three enlisted men) snoozed peacefully in the sun. Here and fhere, children played. No one was listening to Gamal Nasser.

The Disenchantment. What had happened? Many Middle East specialists thought that refugee disenchantment with Nasser began with the Israeli attack into the Sinai. There, before the eyes of 220,000 refugees in the Gaza Strip, their posturing champion, who was to lead the refugees back to their homeland, went down to abject defeat before the Israeli army. To every refugee came the sobering realization that no Arab leader was going to force Israel into the sea and restore them to their lands.

Beyond this explanation (but inextricably linked to it) is the fact that ten years of bitter sanctuary have wrought many changes in Palestine refugees. For eight years the refugees have been fed and cared for almost entirely by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Many had been farmers; some, in camps near Bethlehem and Tulkarm, had spent the years watching longingly from distances of a few hundred yards while the despised Israelis plowed land that once was theirs. At first the Arabs lived with the spittle of hate always moist on their lips. But as tireless UNRWA workers organized schools, hospitals, kitchens, maternity centers, libraries and sports fields, Palestine's inchoate mass of refugees slowly became a society.

It was a society with its own peculiar codes and mores. A brisk business in forged food-ration cards grew up. UNRWA officials at one time estimated that there were 150,000 more ration cards than there were refugees. Refugee dead were seldom reported to UNRWA authorities; they were buried secretly at night so that their ration cards might be kept and sold. Successful entrepreneurs (i.e., those who amassed sufficient ration cards or who prospered in small businesses like basketry, carpentry, weaving or gambling) began to style themselves "sheiks," demanded that UNRWA officials consult them on community affairs.

No Waiting List. Though they were carefully conditioned by Arab propaganda to believe that they were suffering wretchedly at the hands of "Imperialists and Zionists" the refugees gradually found themselves better off materially than they had been at home. They have a higher daily caloric ration (1,500-1.600) than some of the fellahin in Nasser's Egypt, better health and sanitation services than they had ever known in Palestine. UNRWA provides extra rations for pregnant and nursing women, midday meals and vitamin pills for children. UNRWA's education facilities are making the refugees an intellectual elite among Arabs. Nearly 100% of the male children attend school, almost 25% of the girls (Arab parents have still to be sold on education for daughters). Nearly 400 refugees are studying in universities on UNRWA scholarships.

Encouraged by Nasser's loss of prestige as a result of his military defeat, Jordan's Hussein cracked down hard on Egyptian and Communist agents among his country's half-million refugees and launched a campaign to propagandize the refugees on behalf of the United Nations in general and the U.S. in particular. The main line of exposition: You are obviously better off than before. The Communists want to turn you over to the Russians, and nobody knows how the Russians would be. Let's give the Americans a chance to show what they can do for us.

Fresh Poison. For public notice, other Arab nations still refuse to change their line that the only way to solve the refugee problem is to force Israel to restore their homes. To accuse an Arab ruler of talking peace and compromise with Israel is still read by Arabs as a charge of treason to the refugees, and Nasser has used this charge freely. (Last week, apparently to allay any such suspicion of softness to Israel, Jordan stirred up a fresh series of border incidents backed by a volley of accusations and recriminations.) But recently, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon have shown private apprehension that the refugees may be turned against them by the clumsy maneuverings of Nasser and his Syrian pals.

One possible line of approach is a quiet program of individual grants to refugees who would accept resettlement in Arab lands. In the past, the refugees themselves refused to move from their tents to concrete barracks for fear the move might compromise their eventual repatriation; most refused even vocational training to equip them for new jobs. Now. more and more are applying for vocational training. A resettlement program was tried by UNRWA in the Jordan valley. In the first year, only two refugees volunteered to turn in their ration cards and accept resettlement grants. But in 1956 the number rose to 210, and when UNRWA ran out of resettlement funds last June, 502 refugees had accepted resettlement and another 1,600 were on the waiting list. If this program could be revived and broadened, there is a possibility that such Arab nations as Iraq and Saudi Arabia might quietly start letting the refugees in for resettlement.

Depressing Solicitude. Last week, UNRWA Director Henry Richardson Labouisse went before the U.N. to plead for funds. Labouisse needs $25.7 million for relief, and another $15 million for his rehabilitation program. Many nations have failed to make good their pledges of UNRWA aid. Among them: India, France, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Brazil. One reason for UNRWA's imminent shortage of operating funds is that the U.S. (which together with the United Kingdom has supplied 90% of the agency's money) is holding back in the hope that other nations pledged to contribute will ante up.

Said Labouisse: "It is indeed depressing to witness the growing interest and solicitude manifested by almost all countries of the world for the situation in the Near East, and. at one and the same time, to observe their reluctance to face squarely a problem which is at the root of instability in the area--the absence of an equitable solution for the Palestine refugees."

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