Fatemah El-Taweel, 31, left war torn Syria where she was born and raised for Egypt. Yet when she attempted to send her three children to school here she met with an unexpected response.There is a lot more there, including the fact that Mahmoud Abbas is also ignoring the problem.
“A Palestinian, and you want to enroll your children for education here?” asked an employee of the ministry of education whose shocked face made it clear he thought her request audacious. “I told him yes, I do,” says Fatemah. “Just like Syrian refugees who are given these rights in Egypt.”
A presidential decree issued last September grants exceptional rights to Syrian refugees in Egypt, including access to government schools. It did not, however, make any mention of Palestinians who had fled Syria..
Under the threat of missiles, bombardment from tanks and trigger-happy snipers Fatemah’s family fled to Egypt last December. They have since been joined by 1,900 families, an estimated 10,000 Palestinians who moved from Syria to Egypt to escape the conflict.
None are given residency permits. The Palestinian embassy doesn’t follow their cases, monitor their arrival or seek to register them.
The luckiest receive short term tourist visas. Scores are turned away at Cairo airport. If they are between the age of 18 and 40 and traveling alone they are sent back to Damascus, returned to the life threatening situation they had sought to escape but faced with the added burden of the suspicion of the Syrian authorities towards asylum seekers rejected by Egypt.
Denied refugee rights Syrian Palestinians must grapple with a bureaucracy that either doesn’t recognize them or lacks the flexibility to do so and negotiate a decades long mentality that considers them a threat to national security.
Very few managed to flee with their savings. Most didn’t have time to take anything. Lacking any support in a country they barely know, they are left to battle for healthcare, education and housing. Those who did manage to bring money find it soon runs out.
The constant threat of deportation is unsettling. They face an uncertain future in the absence of any institutional support.
“I'm fighting and struggling to be recognized as a refugee,” Abdeljabar Bilal, a 42-year-old Palestinian lawyer who moved to Cairo from Syria last October with his family, told Ahram. “I’m not a tourist.”
They are demanding equal status with Syrian refugees in Egypt, who not only have educational and health rights but the option of registration with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, which provides financial assistance, educational grants, food coupons, protection from deportation, health care and counseling. But this can only happen if Egypt – the host country – gives UNCHR permission to work with Syrian-Palestinians.
According to a UNHCR source who spoke on condition of anonymity, the commission has repeatedly applied for the necessary permission from the ministry of foreign affairs only to be turned down.
...In Egypt, unlike Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank where refugee camps were built especially for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA only operates a liaison office.
The level and the nature of relief provided by UNRWA elsewhere cannot be replicated in Egypt without a change in its mandate here. And that requires both Egypt’s approval and a vote by the UN General Assembly. Yet Cairo’s position is that only UNRWA, and not the UNHCR, is authorized to address the problems facing Palestinian refugees coming from Syria.
Officially, Egypt is maintaining its commitment to preserve Palestinian identity so long as there is Israeli occupation, preventing the “erosion” of that identity by refusing to allow the refugees to be registered by UNHCR which does not distinguish Palestinians from the rest of the world’s refugees.
The most significant difference between other refugees and Palestinians, as per UN resolution 194, is that descendants of Palestinians keep their refugee status, giving them the right to return to their homeland. [That is not in UNGA 194 - EoZ}
But technically, registering with UNHCR would not strip Palestinian refugees of their inalienable rights to their homeland. And given the limitations of what UNRWA’s liaison office can do in Egypt, temporary registration with UNHCR would offer the fastest and most practical, albeit partial, solution to the problems facing Syrian Palestinians in Egypt.
Critics argue that Egypt’s logic of preserving the Palestinian identity is being abused to justify political, racist and security motivated practices against refugees.
Outside of the UNHCR, I cannot find any mention of this severe discrimination in Egypt against Palestinian Arabs by any human rights organizations. (HRW did mention one specific case of two men being sent back to Syria in January, but is silent about Egypt's refusal to let UNHRC help the Palestinian Syrian refugees.) For some reason, Palestinian Arabs aren't nearly as important when they are being abused by other Arabs.