UNRWA cancels Gaza marathon

…because Hamas won’t let women run. According to Associated Press:

A U.N aid agency canceled the Gaza marathon on Tuesday after the Palestinian territory’s militant Hamas rulers banned women from participating in the annual sporting event.

UNWRA, which assists Palestinian refugees and also sponsors and organizes the event, announced that plans for the race next month have been scrapped because of the Hamas demand that women be barred.

A statement from agency said that “this disappointing decision follows discussions with the authorities in Gaza who have insisted that no women should participate” in the marathon.

In fact, Palestinian women have never been allowed to run in the UNRWA Gaza marathon. In this case, however, there was additional pressure to ban international women from participating. From what I understand, there is fairly wide support for the ban in (conservative) Gazan society, including among many UNRWA staff.

Ironically, both Iran and Saudi Arabia field women participants in the Olympics, which makes Hamas support for the ban appear even less understandable more stupid.

 

UPDATE:

Here is the formal statement from UNRWA on the issue:

05 March 2013
Jerusalem

UNRWA regrets to announce that it has cancelled the third Gaza marathon which was to be held on 10 April. This follows the decision by the authorities in Gaza not to allow women to participate.

Registered participants who still wish to come to Gaza are welcome and UNRWA is working on a programme of other events, which will be forwarded to those interested as soon as possible.

UNRWA is disappointed with this decision, and sincerely regrets the inconvenience this may cause to those who planned to participate in the marathon.

Background information

For the past three years, the annual UNRWA Gaza Marathon has raised funds for UNRWA’s summer programme for children in Gaza. In the past, local parents have praised the initiative as a welcome break from the difficulties of life in Gaza. Read more

A total of 551 local people were due to participate in the 2013 UNRWA Gaza Marathon, of which 266 are women. Of these women, 51 were hoping to participate in one of the running events (marathon, half-marathon or 10 kilometres), while 215 were aiming to participate in walks of two or ten kilometres.

A total of 256 international runners had signed up so far, of which 119 are women.

As in 2012, a total of 1,600 children from UNRWA’s 243 schools across Gaza were meant to participate in relays.

In 2012, 393 Gazans participated in the marathon alongside 84 international runners.

Palestinian Olympian Nader el Masri, who has this year been helping UNRWA to train with local people, won the 2012 marathon with a time of 2 hours, 42 minutes and 47 seconds.

About UNRWA

UNRWA is a United Nations agency established by the General Assembly in 1949 and is mandated to provide assistance and protection to a population of some 5 million registered Palestine refugees. Its mission is to help Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip to achieve their full potential in human development, pending a just solution to their plight. UNRWA’s services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, and microfinance.

Financial support to UNRWA has not kept pace with an increased demand for services caused by growing numbers of registered refugees, expanding need, and deepening poverty. As a result, the Agency’s General Fund (GF), supporting UNRWA’s core activities and 97 per cent reliant on voluntary contributions, has begun each year with a large projected deficit. Currently the deficit stands at USD 66 million.

Palestine Refugees and International Law Short Course (Amman, 15-16 March 2013)

Via the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford:

Palestine Refugees and International Law Short Course

Dates: 15-16 March 2013

Venue: The British Institute, Amman, Jordan

Convenors: Professor Dawn Chatty (RSC) and Professor Susan Akram (Boston University)
This two-day non-residential workshop places the Palestinian refugee case study within the broader context of the international human rights regime. It examines, within a human rights framework, the policies and practices of Middle Eastern states as they impinge upon Palestinian refugees. Through a mix of lectures, working group exercises and interactive sessions, participants engaged actively and critically with the contemporary debates in international law and analyse the specific context of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza and Israel).

The fee for this short course is £350 and includes a course pack of materials, and refreshments (lunches, morning and afternoon tea/coffee breaks).

The course has a maximum of twenty-five spaces.

For further details and how to apply see:
www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/palestine-refugees-international-law-2013

A reminder that the forthcoming short course takes place in Jordan in March. Please note that the programme qualifies for Continuing Professional Development with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (CPD SRA) in the United Kingdom

CIA: Demographic Aspects of the Arab-Israeli Dispute (1973)

The Central Intelligence Agency has recently released an account of US intelligence assessment of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, drawing upon a number of newly declassified reports. Among the items cited is an 18 page CIA analysis of “Demographic Aspects of the Arab-Israeli Dispute,” dated 24 August 1973:

Since the 1967 war a new problem has arisen; i.e., the demographic threat posed by Arabs living inside the cease-fire lines. The threat stems from Israel’s control of about 1.5 million Arabs, those in occupied territories and in pre-war Israel itself, and from the almost inexorable intertwining of the two areas. In the future, the Arab population is apt to grow more rapidly than the Jewish population…. In absence of a peace settlement with the Arabs, a kind of territorial imperative operates in Tel Aviv. This being so, Jewish control inside the cease-fire lines will come to depend more and more on either denying the Arabs political rights or goading them into leaving.

Humanitarian Situation of Palestine Refugees in Syria

UNRWA and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs have issued an update on the situation of Palestinian refugees in Syria.

525,000 Palestine refugees live in Syria, of which an estimate 400,000 are affected by the conflict and in need of humanitarian assistance. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) plays an important role in the lives of many Palestine refugees, providing aid, support for education, livelihoods and health services.

You’ll find it here, or by clicking the graphic on the right.

The Well (al-Bier)

A short film from Palestinian film-maker Ahmad Habash.

During the 1948 war in Palestine, an old man encounters a father and his son running for their lives. The three share the common interest of fleeing to a safer place. Unknown what lies ahead, their journey is sidetracked by the enemy who show up this beautiful spring day. and while taking shelter in an abandoned well; fairy-tailed to possess magical powers, they encounter a traumatic incident so complex their outlook on life is changed forever.

There is more on the film and the film-maker at Electronic Intifada.

AFP: UN agencies visit Palestinian refugees in Homs

From AFP (21 January 2013):

 

According to the UNRWA profile of Homs camp:

Homs camp lies within the town of Homs, 160km north of Damascus.

The camp was established in 1949 on an area of 0.15 square kilometres, adjacent to al-Baath University. Most of the original refugees fled from the villages surrounding Haifa , Tabaryeh and Acre in northern Palestine.

Today, most refugees are wage labourers, local civil servants or street vendors.

Poor environmental health is a major concern as it affects the quality of life and poses health risks for the refugees. The sewerage system needs to be expanded to cope with the increasing camp population.

Two old school buildings are in a dilapidated condition and have major structural defects. UNRWA’s main priority in the camp is to reconstruct the schools to provide improved facilities for the refugee children.

Statistics

• More than 22,000 registered refugees
• Six double-shift schools
• One food distribution centre
• One health centre
• One small community-based organsisation (women’s programme centre and disability centre)
• One learning resource centre office
• Demographic profile:
  

Programmes in the camp

• Health
• Education
• Social safety net
• Relief and social services
• Engaging Youth project

Major problems

• Drug addiction
• Housing problems
• High unemployment rate
• Poverty
• Overcrowding

 

AJE: The Great Book Robbery

From al-Jazeera’s Witness documentary programme “Witness” (first broadcast May 2012):

When the Arab-Israeli war raged in 1948, librarians from Israel’s National Library followed soldiers as they entered Palestinian homes in towns and villages. Their mission was to collect as many valuable books and manuscripts as possible. They are said to have gathered over 30,000 books from Jerusalem and another 30,000 from Haifa and Jaffa.

Officially it was a ‘cultural rescue operation’ but for Palestinians it was ‘cultural theft’.

It was only in 2008 when an Israeli PhD student stumbled across documents in the national archive that the full extent of the ‘collection’ policy was revealed.

Using eyewitness accounts, this film tries to understand why thousands of books appropriated from Palestinian homes still languish in the Israeli National Library vaults and why they have not been returned to their rightful owners. Was it cultural preservation or robbery?

Changes at PRRN

Effective today I will no longer be updating the original Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet website. The PRRN blog will continue to function, as will the FOFOGNET news and discussion list. I’ll also leave the original website online for the next year or so.

There are several reasons for doing this. First, managing the blog is far easier than managing the original site, especially since the project is no longer funded and relies on volunteer labour (myself and my son David, who handles much of FOFOGNET, plus the occasional guest contributor to the blog). Second, the original site was set up in 1996 when there was much less information available on the refugee issue, much less of it was available online, and search engines were less effective. All of that has changed too. Third, there isn’t much that the original site does that we can’t cover as well with blog and email list.

Finally, the original website was set up in part to support the so-called “Ottawa Process” of track-two discussions and policy research that the government of Canada initiated in the mid-1990s. Canadian government interest in this has faded over the years, however, both with the deterioration of the peace process but even more so since the first election of Stephen Harper as Prime Minister in 2008. The latter marked the start of  a major shift in Canadian government policy towards the more extreme end of the Israeli political spectrum, to the point that the PLO has considered asking that Canada be removed from any responsibility for the refugee issue should multilateral negotiations ever be resumed.

Over time, I plan to beef up this blog, transferring some key material over from the original PRRN website. If there are features or material you would like to see added here, do let us known by emailing me or leaving a comment below. In the meantime—Happy New Year to all our readers!

Want to run in Gaza? Here’s your chance.

UNRWA has opened registration for the 2013 Gaza Marathon. All proceeds will go to help fund the Gaza Summer Fun Weeks, which will provide a much needed break for Gaza kids. (Last summer UNRWA’s usual summer games couldn’t be held due to funding shortfalls).

The marathon will be held on 10 April 2013. There will also be a half marathon, and a 10k run.

You’ll find further details here.

 

Fighting rages in Palestinian camp in Damascus

From al-Jazeera English, 17 December 2012.