Palestinian agency of symbolic significance

Press, 1 April 1985, Page 14

Palestinian agency of symbolic significance

Mention the words "Palestinian problem” and many New Zealanders’ eyes glaze. However, international concern is of tremendous symbolic significance to the two million people who have been dispossessed from their land for the last 37 years, according to the former director of the United Nations Information Service, Mr Anthony Curnow, who was based in Geneva.

Born and raised in Christchurch, Mr Curnow is travelling in New Zealand and Australia, speaking to the news media, to groups interested in the Middle East, and to Foreign Affairs Ministries about the work of the largest United Nations employing agency — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East

(U.N.R.W.A.). It is a non-political organisation, providing health, education, and welfare services for the two million Palestinians scattered

through Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the two Israelioccupied settlements, the West Bank and Gaza. U.N.R.W.A. has a central administrative core of 120 people, of international origin, but the 17,000 staff employed by the agency are all Palestinian. Each time there has been any sort of political upheaval the agency “has just had to pick itself up again and carry on,” Mr Curnow said.

Mr Curnow said that it was easy to get the impression from reading the news that all Palestinians were “matchine-gun-toting” members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. “But most of them are very ordinary people,” Mr Curnow said. “They are the product of the circumstances in which they find themselves.”

It was important for the Palestinians to know that there was interest and concern for their fate throughout the world, Mr Curnow said.

“This agency is there to look after their needs,” he said. “Its existence and the health of the agency itself are therefore symbolic to them.

“But people are inclined to forget about them. Not enough is known of the agency’s work.”

Mr Curnow said that the agency acted as a source of stability in the area. The opportunities for a good education offered by U.N.R.W.A., in particular, had been snapped up by the Palestinians.

“They are passionately interested in education,” he said. “They work extremely hard. There is no absenteeism.

"They are one of the best educated groups of people in the Arab wotld, and they are highly sought after by the Arab States.”

Mr Curnow said they were remarkably healthy, too, considering the conditions under which many of them live. Many lived in crowded camps, where • health services were severely stretched. “I would just like to remind people that this problem still exists, and that this group of people in the Middle East have to live out their lives while waiting for some kind of permanent solution to their problem by the international community,” he said.