By Mahmoud Ajjour in Gaza & Romana Rubeo
Armed with leaflets, books, and maps, a group of Palestinians are walking the alleyways of Gaza’s refugee camps with an important mission.
The National Campaign to Support the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, launched a campaign in Gaza to help refugees understand their rights as enshrined in international law.
The campaign, launched on Saturday, is entitled ‘From House to House’, as activists literally move from one house to the next.
The initiative’s primary objective is to raise awareness of the rights of refugees in international law.
Under international law, particularly United Nations Resolution 194, Palestinians have the right to return to their towns and villages in historic Palestine, today’s Israel.
This right is ‘inalienable’ and legally valid however the number of years that have passed since Israel ethnically cleansed most of the native inhabitants of Palestine.
The UNGA Resolution 194 resolves that “refugees wishing to return to their homes (…) should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”
The campaign’s starting point was the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, scheduled to cover all Palestinian refugees throughout the besieged Strip.
The Bureij refugee camp was built in the 1950s. According to UNRWA, it currently hosts 46,629 Palestinian refugees.
The campaign is conducted by mostly volunteers and members of the popular committees who walked through the stress of the refugee camp, distributing leaflets and books about the services that must be available to refugees in accordance with international law.
Also, copies of maps of historic Palestine were distributed, with the purpose of reiterating the Palestinians’ right to return to their cities and villages from which they were expelled over 75 years ago.
Most of Gaza’s population is made of refugees or their descendants, who were never allowed to go back to their historic homeland.
Despite the passage of time, Palestinians consider the Right of Return fundamental to any just peace in their struggle against Israeli occupation and apartheid.
(All Photos: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)
