Asia

Home page

Asia

Daily life in the 60-year conflict zone â€“ REPORT â€“ PHOTOSESSION

Daily life in the 60-year conflict zone â€“ <font color=red>REPORT â€“ PHOTOSESSION</font>

15 April 2010 10:42 (UTC +04:00)

Ramallah. Sderot. Viktoria Dementieva â€“ APA. Despite the serious efforts of Quartet of the Middle East last month, no improvement was achieved in the settlement of Palestine-Israel conflict. Obtaining independence and the fate of millions of Palestinians is still urgent for Palestine. APAâ€™s correspondent together with a group of journalists visited a refugee camp of Palestinians on the West Bank of the Jordan River and prepared a report.

The life in the refugee camp shows that the problems of the Palestinian refugees are increasing. There are 750,000 Palestinian refugees on the West Bank of the Jordan river, they have been settled in 19 camps. Representative of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Yusif Khasia says the Palestinians settled in Amari refugee camp still hope that their problems will be solved and they will return to their lands. UNRWA assists the refugees in education and healthcare. The young people are getting secondary education in the refugee camp. Khasia says the refugees have limited opportunities to continue education, get higher education, because they do not have opportunity to study on their own expenses.

UNRWA representative noted that the biggest problem of the refugees was connected with housing. The refugee camp that we visited covers 22 hectare area and is destined for 6500 refugees. Families consisting of 10 or sometimes 20 members live in small houses. There is very little distance between houses, children are obliged to play on the sand of the road. One of the main problems of the Palestinian refugees is unemployment, the youth suffer from this problem more.

UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness says when the agency began to assist the Palestinian refugees, this program was destined for several years.
â€œThen it was supposed that the conflict would be solved soon and the refugees would return home. 60 years have passed, but the conflict has not been solved yet. All the refugees irrespective of their citizenship have an opportunity to choose â€“ stay here, return home or move to a third country. Palestinian refugees do not have such an opportunity as Palestine has not obtained full independence,â€ he said.

Israel intends to guarantee security of its citizens. Sderot is one the Israeli cities frequently suffered from the rocket attacks from Gaza Strip. Israeli government settled the Jewish families emigrated mostly from Iran, Iraq, Russia and North Africa in the city founded in 1951 in the lands which Palestinians considered their own. Beginning from 1990s, Jewish families from Ukraine, the Caucasian countries, including Georgia have moved to Sderot. There was nearly 10 000 population in Sderot early 1990s, but now it has 23 000 population. The Israeli government built new settlements for them, plants and factories. According to Sderot municipal secretary Shalom Alevi, city residents are facing only with the security problem. â€œSince 2001, our city has suffered from the rocket attacks from Gaza Strip. 10 people died as a result of rocket attacks in 2004-2008 and more than 1200 houses were destroyed. More than 8 000 rockets were thrown to Sderot in this periodâ€.

Shalom Alevi said the rocket attacks were not stopped even after the Israelâ€™s Cast Lead Operation in Gaza. More than 400 rockets were thrown to Sderot after the operation. The city continues its routine daily life â€“ people are getting education, working and visiting each other. But everybody knows that he/she has only 15 seconds after air raid alert to be saved from the rocket attacks because the rockets thrown from Gaza Strip reaches Sderot in 15 seconds. There are totally 40 public shelters and nearly 1500 â€œsecurity roomâ€ designed in the residentsâ€™ houses in Sderot.

Why the people continue to live in such dangerous area and donâ€™t leave Sderot? The municipal secretary said some residents moved from Sderot to the neighbor settlements, including Ashkeron and others. â€œBut we try to explain them those cities can also suffer from the rocket attacks and they will be forced to move fartherâ€.

13-year old Sderot resident Yaniv Azrov called the rocket attackers â€œmadâ€. â€œI am concerning about the fate of my family. But I have got accustomed to this city, my school, my friends and I donâ€™t want to move to other placeâ€.

It is difficult to say when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be solved and peace and stability will be established in the Middle East and many Palestinians and Israelis think that it is difficult to solve the conflict without support of third side. Palestinian engineer Abdul Gadeer thinks that it will be impossible to solve the conflict without outside support because this conflict has historic roots.

The international community, including the European Union, which is a member of the Quartet on the Middle East, thinks that two sides â€“ Israel and Palestine must achieve the solution to the conflict.