Little oil money for refugees

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33514, 20 April 1974, Page 11

Little oil money for refugees

(By

RALPH JOSEPH)

The Arab oil barons, with all the millions of dollars pouring jnto their coffers, are contributing a bare SUS2.2Sm for the benefit of Palestinian regugees scattered in two dozen camps in several countries of the Middle East.

The refugees, numbering about 1.5 million, are officially under the care o'f the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, whose budget last year wa sonlv SUS7Bm. About a third of this came from private Western charities and individual contributions. The combined contributions of 14 Arab nations worked out at less than 3 per cent of the total U.N.R.W.A. budget. Saudi Arabia and Libya, with oil revenues astonomically out of proportion to their populations, contributed a miserly $U5297,000 and SUS6OO,OOO respectively last year. Kuwait, another country whose emirs could probably light their cigars with $lOO notes, contributed only SUS4OO.OOO. Iran, though not an Arab state, is expecting SUSI4,OOOm in oil money this year, but contributed a cheque of just SUSIB,OOO. The scandal has been very little talked about, probably because U.N.R.W.A. officials and Middle East newspapers feel too insecure to step on the toes of the all-powerful despots who rule most Arab countries. The refugees, meanwhile, have been living in misery for the last 25 years — under-fed, under-clothed, under-sheltered and undereducated. Guerrillas bred • The camps themselves have been the breeding ground for guerrillas, whose activities have lately taken them beyond the limits of the Arab-Israeli dispute, such as hijackings and the terrorist killings of _ 32 innocent people at Rome " Airport last year. What defensive argument do the Arab sheiks bring up for this evidently intentional neglect of those they keep calling their "Palestinian brothers”? Officials explain that since the Palestinian problem was created by the U.N., the Arabs decided not to contribute to refugee aid. The U.N. should be kept responsible, lest world attention wanders from the issue. The U.N.R.W.A. chief, Sir John Rennie, in a masochistic sort of analysis, blames the organisation itself for failing to do enough public relations work among the Arab emirs to get them to contribute more. Unable to pay The result of this neglect may mean that the U.N.R.W.A. will have to cancel part of its education programme, and as of now the future of 56,000 refugee children in middle-level schools in the camps is threatened and 2000 Palestinian teachers may shortly be out of jobs. The U.N.R.W.A. is so desperately scraping the bottom of its coffers that it was unable to pay the salaries

of its staff in January. Ipaid them later only when a ssm cheque came in unexpectedly from Japan. Rennie warned a special political committee in November: “It mav appear unthinkable that at this juncture in the Middle East the U.N.R.W.A. should be allowed to disintegrate before the expiration of its current mandate at the end of June 1975, but this may well be the result.” To find out just how the refugees were getting on I visited two camps recently, one at Wahdat, on the outskirts of Amman, and another at Baqa’a, a few miles to the north. I was told that the two major complaints at the Wahdat clinic were malnutrition and diseases connected with the common cold, such as bronchitis — indicating lack of proper food and proper shelter in the camps. Tea and bread One doctor explained that many of the refugees, particularly the unemployed'(and large numbers are), try to live on just -tea and bread, “because these are the cheapest.” The bread is made from white flour, part of the s23m (mainly commodities) contribution from the United States. But white bread does not contain all the nourishment needed by the human body and the refugees end up with malnutrition symptoms. The refugees, like normal human beings elsewhere, continue however to dream of better lives in the future, particularly the young ones. About 50 per cent of the children in several class-

rooms 1 visited indicated by a show of hands that they wanted to be either doctors or engineers. The teachers explained in a separate group interview later that the children saw doctors and engineers as being highly paid people and therefore dreamed of these careers, seemingly so pathetically out of their reach. But not surprisingly another 50 per cent of the children plumped for careers as guerrillas, including both boys and girls, showing that the Palestinian guerrillas are still popular among the schoolchildren in the camps, which therefore remain perfect fedayeen recruiting grounds. The teachers, themselves all refugees, were also clearly among the admirers of the commandoes. Wien I questioned them about their attitude to the Rome massacre, several refused to believe Palestinian guerrillas could have, been responsible.