A Girls Dream Crashes Against The Cruelty Of Life

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Education is a human right guaranteed by international covenants. Specifically, the right to education is enshrined in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights . However, this right means almost nothing for females in Palestine. In poor countries and those governed by traditional men societies, education remains a right only for the women from a certain class, the daughters of the ruling and the rich families of that country and society. This right to education remains an illusion and encircled in taboos for females of poor households, is one such society.

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

In the Palestinian West Bank, which remains under the Israeli occupation and is ruled on its behalf by the Palestinian Authority (PA), the females of poor families face discrimination in the field of education, regardless the financial support of the international community and international institutions given to the Palestinian Authority to subvention higher education. The monies given by international funds usually serve the sons and the relatives of the persons in power in Fatah, most of who attend universities and receive higher education in the EU and the USA. Few chances remain for the females of the poor class to receive the financial support for their education which the children of the PA receive.

In Palestine nobody cares about the tears of the girls, nobody listen to the voice of the poor people who have no voice and are not engaged in politics. In Palestine, females are the weakest part of the society, which is controlled by men in patriarchal fashion inside and outside the family, and by the political-religious groups as well non-political religious groups next to the PA, groups where females are clearly far away from the decision centers and of any political status.

In general, the decisions over the fate and future of females is a prerogative of the family, the fathers, brothers and the male relatives, especially in those families which live in rural communities, in the small towns and villages of Palestine.

Overall, the vast majority of Palestinians, especially in the south, in the Hebron district, believes that the appropriate place for women is at home, and they find a husband for their females early on. The Intifada uprisings and the poverty experienced by about 65 percent of the Palestinian people helped to increase the influence of radical religious groups and to promote the wrong and destructive concepts which these groups promote about women. The things became even worse for Palestinian women because the opinion became prevalent that the right age for the females to marry is between 14-18 years or at most after finishing school. After this age, women are seen as spinsters, what mean that they become “old” and not good for marriage. Under the scandalous theories of men, the new husbands, (especially the educated ones), begin the race for the selection of their wives under the age of eighteen. The prospective grooms start looking for girls who are beautiful and young, the only qualification asked from the girls to become the partner.

Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

The price for the widespread phenomenon of marriage at an early age in Palestine is a divorce rate which has exploded. The beautiful young wives become divorced after a year or two. These girls become unfit for marriage in the eyes of society, and they become a new problem in their families, and to society, which looks askance at the fatherless families of these divorced women.

A Girl Rebels Against The Injustice Of The Cruelty Of Life in Hebron and Appeals to Continue Her Education as a Student of Law

Hanin as the child.

Last Thursday morning, my handy rang. Calling me was a girl from Hebron whose family I know. I remember the girl and her family well. I still remember the toys of this blond girl while she was playing in the gardens in the neighborhood of my mother’s house. I know her father and mother. I knew her sisters and her brothers too. They all were children under the age of 10 when I last saw them. They inherited the white skin and the blond hair from their parents. Her family was never interested in politics or in political parties, like the one of third of the Palestinians who ONLY seeks a stable life and putting bread in the mouth of their children.

The name of the girl who called me is Hanin, what mean “yearning”, “longing”, “loving”. Hanin was crying bitterly. She is not a child anymore, she is 18 years old. Last year she finished her secondary school. She received 87 points of 100 in the general school certificate examinations at the literature section of the secondary school.

Hanin told me while crying: “I want to be a strong woman like you”. I asked her if she want to be a journalist. She said “no, journalism did not exist as a woman profession in Hebron after you left. I want to be a lawyer, my way and future are in studying at the university and protecting myself from the injustice of society. I love the law and I don’t want to marry and then divorce like other girls. I want to defend these girls who are divorced”.

She asked me what she can do in order to attend university. “My father cut me from studying at the Open University after one year of learning Business and Administration. My father is jobless most of the time. He works some months in the year, and stays the rest without work”.

Hanin asked me to help her to study law at the University, she asked me for support. She was very scared that her father will force her to marry a wealth man because of her beauty. She repeated several times “I do not want to marry, I want to study, but I am forced to stay at home. My life has turned hell since three months. Since my father is not able to pay for my study, he forces me to sit at home. I am very scared that I will be forced to marry anybody”.

“Since three months I am sitting at home” Hanin said, “but my desire of being a lawyer has grown more and more inside me. Why should I stay at home? Why should I not study law? Why should I marry and bury my desire and will? Why is my father poor? Who can help me or give me wise advice?” I heard many questions from Hanin, but I was not able to answer even one.

Hanin cried again and said: “My parents are fighting all the time because of me. My father sold my mothers gold to feed us, but not for my study at the university. Last week my father thought of divorcing my mother. This could be a disaster for our family. I am forced to be quite, but I am not able to forget my dream of being a lawyer”.

Appeal To The Director Of OFID in Vienna

Hanin asked me to send an appeal on her behalf to all international organizations which support the right of women to education and to all persons who support the rights of females to study. One such organization is the OFID, which funds education for Palestinians and also works through the UN. Hanin, who holds a UN refugee card but has never, received any support from the UN, asked to put her appeal in my words.

Dear Dr. Suleiman Al-Herbish,
Director-General of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID).

Dr. Suleiman Al-Herbish

I don’t know you, but I have been told about the kind help which your organization gives to Palestinians in the field of education.

I am a Palestinian girl from Hebron in the southern West Bank. I am 18 years old, I finished secondary school successfully and received 87 points of 100 in the general school certificate examinations.

I want to study law in order to be able to defend myself and the Palestinian girls who have successfully finished their secondary studies but are forced to marry because of their family’s mentality.

Many of these girls end up divorcing after a short time, and I do not wish to follow this path in life.

My father finished secondary school. He is the owner of a small hand work business, but he is jobless most of the year like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, due to the Israeli occupation and economic blockade. My mother is a simple woman with only basic school, she is completely dependent on my father.

I respectfully appeal to you for your support and advice to help me attend University so that I can study law. I believe strongly that higher education is a kind of protection for women, and that a University certificate is strong weapon for women who could face the injustice of a hard life under the Israeli occupation.

I do not want to grow to become a weak and dependent woman like my mother is now, or like the too many weak women in our Palestinian society.

Thank you,

Hanin

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Note: This article was published before contacting Dr. Al-Herbish because of the New Year holidays. As soon as possible the appeal will be submitted to the right address. I will updated this article whenever I receive an answer from Dr. Al-Herbish, or any other person.

I know the full name of Hanin and have the contact information of her family phone in Hebron, and I can put you in contact with her family. Hanin’s family does not have Internet at home, and they do not have an e-mail address. Hanin speaks Arabic. Her father speaks Arabic and very little English. I will be able to translate any answers to this girl between English and Arabic.

I had a chance to talk with her father, who was very calm as in know him before, but he was very sad of his awful situation. He promised me not to force his daughter to marry anybody as a solution to his financial problems. He is very sad of the deteriorated situation of all Palestinians. He suffers because of his daughter pain, but still with cuffed hands, and does not know what to do.

by Kawther Salam

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OFID Grants $500.000 Emergency Help to Haiti

OFID Grants $500.000 Emergency Help to Haiti

Vienna, Friday 15 Jan. 2010. Mr. Suleiman J. Al-Herbish, Director General, OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) stated that the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) has approved a grant of US$500.000 to provide essential relief supplies and help finance emergency operations to aid victims of the massive earthquake that struck the coast of Haiti on January 12. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) estimates that up to three million people (roughly a third of Haiti’s population) have been affected by the earthquake.

Immediate assistance will be directed toward the most vulnerable groups, and emphasis will be placed on restoring family links during the initial response stage. On January 13, the IFRC launched a preliminary emergency appeal seeking US$10 million to assist approximately 100,000 people (20.000 families) for nine months. The appeal will be revised in the upcoming days. OFID’s grant, which will be channelled through the IFRC, will be used to help finance some of the relief efforts.

Assistance from the IFRC has started to arrive in the country. Several Emergency Response Units (ERUs) are being deployed with staff coming from Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies from all over the world. The ERUs will provide urgently-needed support to staff and volunteers of the Haiti Red Cross who have been assisting the population with relief items since the earthquake struck. Among other things, the ERU members will establish a fully-equipped field hospital, while others will be engaged in relief coordination and providing water and sanitation facilities, shelter, telecommunication services and medical supplies.

[click on picture to see larger]

Edeline B. Clermont weeps in the Little Haiti area of Miami as she talks to her sister after both were unable to contact relatives in Haiti, which has been devastated by Tuesday's earthquake. Pic. Credit: Alan Diaz/Associated Press.

The earthquake, which registered 7.3 on the Richter Scale, was the worst in the region in more than 200 years. As many as 50.000 people are, thus far, feared dead. The most severely-affected cities are the capital Port-au-Prince, Carrefour and Jacmel located in the West Province area that is populated by some 2.2 million people. The devastation wrought upon the area is extensive, a situation exacerbated after the occurrence of more than 10 aftershocks that measured 5.0 on the Richter Scale.

Vital infrastructure has been destroyed and Government buildings have collapsed or have suffered severe damage, including the presidential palace and several ministries, as well as the local United Nations headquarters. One three-story hospital has been razed to the ground, and many of the remaining ones are not admitting additional patients as they are already operating at full capacity.

by Kawther Salam

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UNRWA in the Focus of Accusations

On Friday October 9 2009, the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Quds published a statement of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), Karen Koning AbuZayed in which she announced the discontinuation of some important activities of the UNRWA, such as scholarships for Palestinian students.
According to Al-Quds, the statement of Koning came during a political interview which she gave to the “Middle East Report” from London. According to Koning: “the UNRWA has a financial deficit estimated at $100 million, and that the UNRWA does not get a sufficient budget to cover its emergency activities”. (Click on pictures to make them bigger).

Koning said that “what most concerns us in the UNRWA is that we are not getting enough money to cover our activities such as education and health care”. She added: “At the end of this year we have deficit of $17 million. We hope that our contacts during the General Assembly in New York will fill the gap and help us to go ahead until the end of the year”. AbuZayed expressed her deep concern about next year, 2010, as the year will start “while we do not have anything”.
Questions Marks

As a comment on the announced discontinuation of some important activities of the UNRWA, such as scholarships for Palestinian students, I would like to ask the the UNRWA Commissioner-General, Karen Koning AbuZayed, some questions:

• Where is the OPEC grant (US$1.2) of 1 July 2009 which the Commissioner-General which she personally accepted and received from the OPEC Fund as a donation towards a new scholarship fund for talented Palestinians?
• Where is the OPEC grant of 1 July 2009 which she herself accepted from the OPEC Fund for International Development for a microfinance fund towards supporting the private business sector of Palestinian Refugees through a micro-finance scheme (PALFUND) which reached (US$10) million?

“Justified” Corruption at UNRWA

On 1 October 2009, Al-Nahar News from Deir Al-Balah in Gaza reported that Mr. Ramadan Al-Omari of the Comptroller General unit of UNRWA decided to leave his post after serving for more than thirty years in the position. Mr. Al-Omari sent an open letter to the Commissioner General of UNRWA, her deputy, and to all members of UNRWA Board, in which he revealed some aspects of corruption and misappropriation of funds and the budget of the UNRWA.

Al-Omari said that “the US$ twenty-five million budget of the UNRWA for the years 2010 / 2011 were spent without tangible returns for the Palestinians”. He added: “Most of that money has gone to consultants working in the UNRWA and for the employment of more than 15 international staff which were not needed, each one contracted with a salary of not less than one hundred thousand dollars (US$100.000) a year”.

Mr. Al-Omari criticized the work of UNRWA, which has recently adopted very questionable methods in terms of style, in terms of organizational development, and in the terms of making decisions. He said that “such developments have created an imposed upon us an international staff which we do not need”. He also stated that the UNRWA decisions are taken within a circle of agency managers who form a closed group, de-facto conspiring with each other, who have neither connection to nor interest in the Palestinians, and who take their decisions without consulting with the other responsible managers in the UNRWA work. Al-Omari was perplexed by how the UNRWA gives unlimited powers to the Director of Human Resources Management, taking in consideration any other input from within the organization or outside.

Al-Omari pointed to the main of contention that led to his resignation, which was related to the recent abolition by the higher UNRWA administration of the committees of human resources and contracts, in implement their plans without referral to the advice and review by these committees, which had been high regulatory powers within the agency.
Al-Omari said “the UNRWA wasted huge amounts of money on the so-called summer games in Gaza. This budget would have been enough to rebuild dozens of schools which were destroyed by the Israeli occupation during recent years”.

Karen Koning Denies

For her part, Karen koning, the UNRWA Commissioner-General, said that the statements and allegations of Mr. Al-Omari are wrong, different and far away of the truth. She added: “It is unfortunate that the Al-Omari letter was circulated (passed) to the press”. Koning considers that the open letter of Al-Omari is “damage to the Palestinian refugees and the UNRWA”. But her statement appears to be the usual “blame the victims” tactic used by psychopaths. See Koning denial as (PDF)

Al-Omari Replies to the Denial of Koning

Dear Karen,

Thanks for forwarding to me your message to the Management Committee members and for copying me on your letter to the HQ staff, both dated 4 September 2009. To a large extent the substance of both letters is the same and, therefore, I would like to address the two in this brief response, and to copy same to all addressees. Please note that I do not want to enter into a protracted exchange, but the way both letters were drafted for your signature indicates a lot of window dressing and a distraction from the real issues.

• In this regard, I notice that in both letters you have chosen to ignore my comments in paragraphs six and seven of the open letter regarding the critical issues of “hiring friends and former colleagues” and the practice of “favoritism and marginalization” respectively. I blame no body for ignoring them, as I know none would have any defense in addressing these management lapses.
• It is with regret that your reference in both letters to my “disagreement with the reform process” is incorrect and is out of context. I was, and remain, a big supporter of any reform process. I would very much be in support of the change to the better and not just the change for the sake of change as many of the OD activities have transpired to be. You may wish to recall that it was me who spearheaded the transformation of the Agency’s budget to a programme based budget since the beginning of the year 2000. You will also recall the more recent comment of the ACABQ which praised UNRWA’s budget to the extent that it was suggested to be used as a model by other UN organizations.
• It is also with regret that the statement in respect of the “Comptroller’s assertion that consultants have been hired to perform tasks that could have been easily undertaken by UNRWA staff, ……. that the majority of the OD Budget goes towards the salary of new staff whom we are proposing for absorption into the UN Regular Budget” (the last sentence in the fifth paragraph of your letter to the MC members), is misleading and does not address the issue as discussed with you in person. I regret that I have to be more direct and explain. The example I referred to in paragraph six of my open letter regarding the use by HRD of a friend/former colleague consultant to perform a study on the retirement benefits in the area of operations where the consultant’s work ended with a report containing data about the retirement benefits in the region without giving any suggestions or recommendations as to how the various retirement schemes could be summed up to produce an UNRWA specific retirement system that would be compatible with the practice of the host authorities. You may wish to note that this useless study has cost the Agency $ 21,266.32 (doc 0-8AFV004095 refers) for work that was done in a month’s time. This is exactly what I meant with my earlier statement that the same task could have been easily undertaken by a local staff member from amongst the all competent ones in the Division of Compensation and Management Services.
• In connection with the above the OD, in my view, has become a job creation programme for international staff. It so far employs sixteen international staff members, the actual cost of whom is, so far, some $ 4 million. It also involves the hiring of international consultants, the cost of whom is so far another $ 4 million! It is with sadness that I report that the cost so far paid to the local staff hired under the OD is only $ 133,000.
• It is true that the OD is separately funded and that the General Fund money is not used for its activities, yet, I have to clarify, as you will appreciate, that donors have very limited funds to give to UNRWA against the various budget lines; hence any funding to the OD would certainly negatively affect the funding to the General Fund. Moreover, having the OD separately funded should not justify spending such funds on activities that do not produce any benefits to the Organization.
• It is with regret that the OD defenders keep using the Gaza Field initiatives of the “Schools of Excellence” and the “Education Recovery Plan” as successes for the OD. You will agree with me that credit should go to where it belongs. These two initiatives were exclusively initiated and implemented by the GFO management totally independent from the OD, and that they are funded from the Field’s own resources, mainly the Emergency Appeal budgets. The fact that they coincided with the OD should not give any credit to the OD process itself.
• Before I conclude, and by the way I still have a lot more to say, I want to ask you a question again on what basis the leading consultant of the OD said in the June QMC that “half of those around this table may not be here by this time next year”. Was this said in vacuum? Or it resulted from the “close” discussions within your inner circle? What else I need to say to further prove the existence of the closed circle management approach that has been prevailing for the last few years?
• Finally, concerning your statement that my open letter contains “unsubstantiated accusations”, I believe the best judge here is to have an independent review of the issues raised with the objective of making the facts clear to the Agency’s management and staff, the host authorities, and the refugee community at large. Read the letter in Arabic as (PDF)
  

Regards,
Ramadan

Contradicting UNRWA Policies in Palestine

Recently, the UNRWA, which until now did not find it necessary to teach the Palestinians the ir own history, the history of 61 years of Catastrophe, the “Nakba”, and which keeps its schools in Palestinian refugee camps in Palestine and in the Diaspora in a miserable state, decided to teach the Holocaust to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Why must the Palestinians learn about the Holocaust at the UNRWA schools, while the UNRWA did never teach these children about their own history of Nakba, and the daily genocide which they live since 61 years under the Zionists occupation? Is the purpose of the defalcation of funds from the UNRWA by the cronies of Koning related to this travesty?

The shameful and contradicting standards of the UNRWA in the sector of education has brought about a huge reaction of anger in Palestine. On 1 July 2009 I asked the Commissioner-General, Karen Koning AbuZayed, personally:

• Who is responsible for the eliminating the teaching of the Palestinian Nakba, the genocide of the Palestinians, from the curriculum of study of Palestinian children in schools and UNRWA?
• Why does the UNRWA not teach the Palestinian children their own history in its schools in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan refugee camps? And which are the aims of the UNRWA in cultivating this ignorance of the Palestinian history in its schools?

Koning, who obviously considers teaching about the Nazi genocide during the second world war, which interests nobody in Palestine, to be a part of a “human rights” curriculum, did not answer my questions, she said anything, and continued squeezing her hair. She even turned off my tape recorder, which was in front of her on the table.

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The UN: Giving Shit to Palestinians for over Sixty Years

The UN: Giving Shit to Palestinians for over Sixty Years

Jul 27th, 2009 by kawther.salam

Sorry to everybody for these impolite words about the UNRWA, I could not find other words to describe the situation, and things should be called by their name. Sorry also for showing these photos of dirty toilets unfit for human use, of urine, dirt and the polluted environment and unhealthy situation which is experienced by all Palestinians who reside in the refugee camps run by the UNRWA in Palestine and in the Diaspora, as well as by all those who have received and still receive their education and medical services at the UN schools and clinics during the last 62 years under the Zionist occupation and the 60 years of UNRWA establishment. (click on pictures to see them bigger).

Many thanks to Al-Nahar News Agency from Gaza, who provided me with the photos used in this article, and which were taken by their correspondent Nisrin Mousa at the UN health and medical center of Khan Younis, a center which is supposed to provide medical and health services to the 59.524 Palestinian refugees who live in the camp.

According to Nisrin Mousa, everybody who visits the UNRWA health and medical center is obliged to hold his nose closed because of the foul stench which spreads everywhere. The patients are obliged to give urine for medical tests in the toilets depicted here, which are not fit for animals and certainly not for a place delivering medical services. A child was seen urinating in a container for medical tests on the floor outside of a toilet stall, her mother said that she was scared that her daughter would become infected if she entered the stall. Another patient (Shaima’a) was giving urine for a test outside of the clinic after she hid herself in a narrow ally. According to Shaima “it’s shame to do that, but it’s shame on the UN medical center to treat us like insects in their contaminated and unhealthy medical clinic”.

Naem Asa’ad, the director of the UN clinic in Khan Younis, refused to say anything about the unhealthy situation of the clinic. His only comment was “I will fall in problems and I will be punished if I open my mouth commenting on this situation with even one word”.

Majdy Al-Amour, a general doctor at the UN clinic, said that the any contaminated place can affect the health of the people, whether children, young women, men or old. He added that the toilets contaminated with bacteria caused problems: first they infect the digestive system of the human beings, and then they move of the respiratory system and impact the health of the patient unfavorably. We hope that the UN administration will not cause trouble for Dr. Al-Amour, because the rules which the UN imposes on their employees are used to cover up their crimes and negligence which cause misery for Palestinians, and force the UN employees of accept the inhuman situation and threats them to loss their work if they open their mouth in criticism words, or even clarifications.

The disgusting photos from the UN clinic in Khan Younis are nothing new in my knowledge, or in the knowledge of any Palestinian refugee under the “care” of the UN. Everybody who receives medical treatment or educational services at the UNRWA schools and medical centers knows how filthy and unhealthy these places are. And even these minimal and unsuitable services are being reduced to nothing in many cases, for a population who is dependent on them because our economy has been wholly destroyed by the Israelis.

The UNRWA Commissioner-General in Vienna

At the end of June 2009, the UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen Koning AbuZayed was in Vienna celebrating the 60 anniversary of the UNRWA, she celebrated that the UNRWA had survived for 60 years giving shit and misery to the Palestinians. This is what was actually celebrated in the courtyard (Arkadenhof) of the municipality in Vienna under the auspices of Saar, OFID, and other organizations. The well known Lebanese musician Marcel Khalife was invited to play at the luxurious AbuZayed celebration, which cost over 130.000 Euros, a sum out of proportion with anything the UNRWA does, and which was lavished upon a few yes-men.

On that occasion Miss AbuZayed held a press conference at OFID offices in Vienna, about which I wrote. She did not say one word about the inhuman situation, the dirt, the brutal stench at the miserable UN schools and medical centers throughout Palestine and the Palestinian refugee camps, and the poverty and abject misery of most Palestinians. Instead, those who bothered to attend this self-celebratory event, received a bag with about ten kilos of UN propaganda showing how nice and helpful the UNRWA is in occupied Palestine. If I was not Palestinian and had not experienced the misery at the UN schools and medical centers myself, I would have wanted to immigrate to one of the UNRWA refugee camps!

DDT at UNRWA Schools

What I remember from my time at the UNRWA school in Hebron (and the UN schools were considered better than the other schools in the refugee camps) where I received my elementary and preparatory education, is much less than flattering. I remember cold and misery, constant beatings, insults and abuses by the teachers, I remember how the personnel at the UNRWA school in Hebron once spread DDT on my hair and on the hair of all the other students.

On that occasion the UN sent some men with big bags filled with a pale yellow powder fine as flour, DDT. The teacher told us to stand in two long rows; she told us that we would receive a health service, which consisted in a handful of DDT spread in our hair. The teacher said that the DDT would kill the lice which had spread in our school. My hair was without lice but the man spread it on me anyway. He spread the powder on everyone except the niece of my teacher, Moyassar Al-Tayeh, and Lamia Bali, a girl whose father was also a teacher working for the UN.

I arrived home that day tired and with strong headache caused by the yellow powder which the UN people had spread in my hair, in addition, my skin was red with an itchy rash caused by the DDT. My mother was very angry, she showered me two, three times, but the strong smell was not going away. On the second day my father went to the now deceased UN education director for Hebron, Abd Allah Hamdan, to file a complaint against the DDT “health service”. My mother went to complain to the school headmistress of the time, Lamia’a Bader, whose sister Randa Bader is the current director of the UNRWA office in Hebron. As in most cases, these well-payed slots are inherited within families.

I also still remember the toilets of the UN school in Hebron. The situation was worse than in these photos from the Khan Younis clinic. The toilets were dark, without lights, water or doors, the stench was horrible, they were dirty and full of rats and cockroaches. There was no running water in the school, we were forced to beg the neighbors for water if we wanted to drink.

UNRWA Contaminated Vaccinations

I also remember the vaccinations which we received at the UNRWA elementary school, they were said to be against smallpox but I think that they were contaminated. The results of these vaccinations were very clear, all the children in the school became infected with smallpox after these vaccinations, which somehow was renamed “water-pox” and other names by the UN personnel. I still have marks of this disease on places of my body where I scratched open the water-filled pustules. Since these vaccinations started, there have been yearly outbreaks of smallpox in Palestine – a disease which was unknown until the UN brought it. A doctor told me that the disease will be in Palestine for hundreds of years to come. I have seen young children and old men covered with these pustules.

The other thing I remember from the UNRWA elementary schools is that the teacher and the headmistress, apart from daily abuses and mistreatments, were sending the students to clean their houses during the mooring, during the time when they were supposedly attending class, and sometimes after the school hours. At school we were beaten all the time and for any reason or no reason at all, but what for sure would make the teachers beat any of us was the mention of the word “Palestine”.

I was one of those sent to do chores to the house of my teacher in this way. I once received 10 cents from the headmistress after I washed a mountain of dishes, glasses, and pots … in her kitchen. I was then in the fourth class, 9 years old. I bought ten pieces of the cheap ice cream, I ate some of them and I threw the rest. I was scared of being late and that my mother would discover the story, each time I came home late I had to lie to my mother and invent that I had attended an extra lesson at school.

Ten Million Euro OFID Fund to UNRWA

The UN educational services for Palestinians are reduced and confined to the provision of basic services in some schools, at the refugee camps and in some villages. In Hebron, the URWA schools were closed some years ago. The medical and the health services and social relief were reduced, but the poverty of the people has meanwhile increased in Palestine. Over 75 percent of the Palestinian refugees who live in Hebron are jobless.

According to people from Hebron, the UN medical center refuses to pay the necessary medical treatment and tests for Palestinian refugees who nominally have the right to receive these services. A jobless person who depends on these UNRWA services recently told me that the UN health center of Hebron refuses to pay a necessary examination for his wife at Al-Ahli hospital. He said that the examination is necessary and urgent, but that the UN would not pay the examination. Why?
According to my sources, many poor people who have no other source of food or who cannot afford even minimal medical services, are routinely denied even the most basic medical treatment; the medical center invents any reasons to deny the people necessary treatments. But, the same treatments and services which the poor people are routinely denied at the UN medical center in Hebron, a few people more equal people receive, namely some few employees of the UN, their families and friends. This is a clear case of corruption.

The UN clinic in Hebron is located in area H2 under the Israeli, at Talat al-Karantina, it is surrounded by many illegal checkpoints of the Israeli military, who routinely deny the Palestinian refugees, pregnant women to reach the clinic. In many cases the soldiers have attacked the UN workers at the clinic and obliged them to close, but never to my knowledge the UN has protested against these Israeli criminal actions. I know the UN clinic well, I also know the medical stuff. The medical staff at this center should treat two hundred patient daily. But the whole treatment for all the patients consists in a Paracetamol tablet and some injections.

The miserable treatment of the UN towards Palestinians is not limited to their medical and education disservices. Most Palestinians have been impoverished by the wholesale and genocidal destruction of our economy by the israelis, but the UNRWA only helps “refugees”. Instead of helping in this situation, the UNRWA has reduced their supplies of flour, lentils, sugar, rice given to the refugees. The supplies are given only twice a year, but actually at irregular intervals, sometimes after 10 months, and in most cases only after the people beg for them. And, the UN relief supplies are often over their date of expiry. This is all what the UN luxury organization gives to the Palestinians under the occupation and now under the boot of the useless spongers which are the PA officials. What a contrast between the miserable treatment of the needy in Palestine, and the lavishing of money on undeserving corruptionists in Vienna.

Finally, the OFID and the Commissioner-General of the UNRWA signed a grant agreement in which OFID will give an additional contribution of US$3 million of the OFID Micro Enterprises for Palestine Fund (PALFUND), which will be administrated by the UNRWA. Through the OFID, the contribution to the PALFUND account will reach US$10 million in 2009.

MY Questions:

• - Will the extended contribution of OFID to the PALFUND of US$10 million be able to repair the insalubrious situation of the UN medical centers and schools at the Palestinian refugee camps?
• - Will the Commissioner-General Karen Koning AbuZayed make public the names of the Palestinian beneficiaries of the OFID Fund? I challenge Karen Koning AbuZayed to disclose the names of the beneficiaries if she has not done so already, because I suspect that, as usual, the beneficiaries are people chosen from among the relatives and friends of UNRWA employees and PA employees, the usual group of massively privileged people who are still registered as refugees, taking food from the mouth of the poor.
• - Why are the Palestinian refugees not receiving the food, medical services, education which they need, when they need them, and without being forced to resort to begging in order to receive them?
• - Has the UNRWA stopped poisoning the Palestinian school children with DDT And other substances?
• - How many Palestinian children have died due to the contaminated vaccines distributed by the UNRWA at their medical centers? (Some years ago, and before I live in the exile I received a complaint from the family of Abu Haieh who claimed that a lady (Inshirah) died after she received an injection for cows at the health center of UNRWA).
• - Which were/are the intentions of the UNRWA in using contaminated vaccines on Palestinian children?
• - Who was/is responsible for the vaccination programs of Palestinians which have taken place under the supervision of the UNRWA, since the inception of UNRWA?

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