Many Palestinians fled the country, and those who stayed were under Israeli occupation. Those who fled went to Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Syria, and other Arab countries. However, many of the Palestinians were not welcomed into their brother countries and became refugees. By the end of 2010, the number of Palestinian refugees on United Nations Relief and Works Agency rolls raised to nearly five million, several times the number that left Palestine in 1948.
In just the past three years, the number grew by eight percent. Today, forty-two percent of the refugees live in the territories; if you ask those living in Jordan, eighty percent of the Palestinians currently live in “Palestine” (Bard). UNRWA stands for United Nations Relief and Works Agency. They provide assistance for nearly 5 million registered Palestine refugees. The largest concentration of Palestine refugees is in Jordan, representing more than 40% of those refugees registered with UNRWA (Palestinian Refugees).
To this day there remains a large number of refugees, and there is still great tension between the Arabs and the Jews and the fight over Israel. There is the inevitably destabilizing effect of trying to maintain an ethnically preferential state, particularly when it is largely of foreign origin (Qumsiyeh). Another issue is that Palestinians have little control of their own lives. Many of the refugees living in the refugee camps are subject to torture and abuse by the Israeli’s who run the camps.
The book Wild Thorns, by Sahar Khalifeh, is based on the Six-Day war and the life of the Palestinians in 1967. The main character in the story, Usama, returns to his homeland in the West Bank from Amman. Usama is a Palestinian and upon returning home he immediately can see the change that occurred within his country, his own people, and is angered by being under Israeli occupation. He doesn’t understand why his friends and family are not fighting for their country and instead dealing with the new living conditions. His Palestinian friends do not like doing so anymore than Usama, but it is all they can do to feed their families. The book also depicts to the reader how badly the Israelis treat the Arabs living in their own country.
Works Cited
Bard, Mitchell. “The Palestinian Refugees.” Jewish Virtual Library-Homepage. Web.
10 Nov. 2011. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/refugees.html.
“Key Historical Events.” Plight of the Palestinians. World Wide Web Domination, 2010.
Web. 27 Nov. 2011. http://palestinian-plight.com/history.html.
“Palestinian Refugees Issue since 1948.” Palestinehistory.com. Web. 27 Nov. 2011.
http://www.palestinehistory.com/pdf/issues/refugees.pdf.
Qumsiyeh, Mazin. “Palestinian Refugees Right to Return and Repatriation.” If
Americans Knew—What Every American Needs to Know about Israel.
Web. 10 Nov. 2011. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-qumsiyeh.html.
“The Truth about the Palestinian People.” Target of Opportunity-Eliminating the
Planet of Liberals One at a Time. Web. 10 Nov. 2011.
http://www.targetofopportunity.com/palestinian _truth.html.
United States Holocaust Museum. “The Holocaust.” Holocaust Encyclopedia.
27 Nov. 2011. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/?ModuleId=10005143.
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