Palestinian Arabs Still Expect to Regain Homes

Ration Card Is Symbol of Hope

Wilton Wynn, Associated Press, Beirut

Palestinian Arabs Still Expect to Regain Homes — The Herald News, 31 July 1958 — The Herald News · Passaic, New Jersey · 31 July 1958

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Transcribed from the clipping

“BEIRUT, (AP)—A little card worth $1.50 a month stands between the Palestine Arab refugee and despair these days. Once the barometer of Middle Eastern politics, the refugee feels left out of things in these days of feuds between pro-Nasser and anti-Nasser factions in the Arab world. The United Nations talks more about Lebanon and Iraq than about Palestine.

But so long as the refugee hangs on to his UN ration card, he has hope. Economically, the card means he can eat. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine distributes rations to more than 830,000 refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

These are the people, or children of people, who fled their homes in Palestine 10 years ago and have lived off UN rations ever since.

What He Gets. The monthly ration gives the refugee something like six pounds of flour, a pound and a half of beans, an equal amount of sugar and rice and a little more than a pound of fat or oil. On local markets, the value of these rations runs to little more than $1.50. To the refugee, the ration card also represents a political claim.

Issued by the UN, it implicitly recognizes that he has been dispossessed and that has a claim to something back in Palestine. To an outsider, it is almost impossible to believe that these refugees still are convinced they will go back to homes inside what now is Israel.

Israel has celebrated its 10th anniversary, but the Arab refugees has not begun to accept Israel as permanent. They insist the Arabs one day will conquer Israel and restore the refugees.

Resist Resettlement. This atttitude—unchanged in 10 years—partly explains the refugees’ resistance to resettlement and their determination to cling to that ration card. There are more refugees on rations now than five years ago. UNRWA is on a treadmill in its efforts to solve the refugee problem.

When an Arab dies in a refugee camp, his family may bury him secretly and continue to draw his rations. When a son goes to Kuwait or Iraq and finds a job, the family stays behind in a refugee camp in Jordan or Gaza and holds on to the son’s ration card. The son later returns to live in the camp; he doesn’t go to Kuwait to stay.

The refugees don’t want to exchange that ration card for a job. It would look too much like giving up their ‘ticket back to Palestine.’ This straw of hope may be taken from the refugees when UNRWA’s mandate expires in 1960. UN member states are tired of contributing to a program that gets nowhere. In 1953, UNRWA was feeding 806,620 refugees.

Five years later, UNRWA is feeding 836,777. The increase is due largely to birth rate. The number who become self-supporting, who emigrate, or who are reported dead is negligible… The refugees also are in danger of losing their political position in the Arab world. Arab leaders are forgetting to list Palestine first among their grievances.

They are fighting over other things… ‘Did you hear that speech?’ a worried Palestinian asked. ‘He didn’t say much about Palestine, did he?’ In spite of these omens, the refugees still place blind hope in what the ration card represents.”

Context added by this archive

A wire correspondent explaining, in 1958, why the ration card was refused as a trade for a job: it was the receipt for a claim. “Atttitude” is the paper’s.

Cite this clipping

"Palestinian Arabs Still Expect to Regain Homes," The Herald News, 31 July 1958, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1958-005. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1958-005

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Both cases, printed in the same year: 1958