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Friday, February 06, 2015

The homeless Palestinians no one cares about

There have been weekly stories like this one from Reuters:
Egypt and Norway urged donors on Thursday, including Gulf states squeezed by low oil prices, to keep promises of providing $5.4 billion in aid for the Palestinians after the devastating war in Gaza last year.

The two nations, who led a donors' conference in Cairo in October when the cash was pledged, wrote an open letter to donors and said people in Gaza were suffering with a slower-than-expected pace of reconstruction.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the two felt it had become necessary to remind donors who had promised to help rebuild Gaza that they "should fulfil their obligations in this regard."

"No one has said to us that they're not committed to what they have pledged, but also due to oil price and other issues in the Gulf, there has been a bit of a lingering," Norwegian Foreign Minister Boerge Brende told a news conference.

"We know that there are houses now being built and reconstructed but the pace of this is not at a level where we had foreseen and where we had wished it, so this is very important," Brende said.
While it is interesting that donor nations, especially Arab states, have not been keen on paying their pledges, they at least paid lip service to helping the poor Gazans who are homeless because of Israel's bombing of terror infrastructure in their neighborhoods.

What about Palestinians who are homeless because of Lebanese bombing of terror infrastructure in their neighborhoods?

From May to September 2007, the Lebanese army heavily shelled the Nahr el-Bared camp in northern Lebanon to destroy the Fatah al-Islam terror group. The camp was completely destroyed and some 30,000 residents made homeless.


UNRWA estimated it would cost $345 million to rebuild the camp. Today, nearly 8 years later, only about half that amount has been raised and far less than half of the residents are back in homes.

There was no major summit to rebuild for Nahr el-Bared. No 5K walks to raise money.  UNRWA has been much quieter about the wanton devastation done by Lebanese forces than the much more directed actions of the IDF.

It is much easier to make people care about Palestinian Arabs when Israel can be blamed for their plight.

Funny how that happens.