News, May 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info
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Palestinian refugees in Al Amari welcome French FM, hope for peace
By Sophie Claudet
Agence France-Presse, Jordan Times, 5/27/03
AL AMARI REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin toured this impoverished refugee camp Monday as residents hoped his visit would make a tangible difference in their lives.
“It's important for us to be acknowledged as refugees. I hope he can do something for us,” said Fatma Imar, a 54-year-old woman who lives in Al Amari, home to around 7,000 refugees and south of the West Bank town of Ramallah.
“We can't go on getting killed and killing, we need peace,” she added as another woman fumed de Villepin's visit was a show for the cameras.
“He'll be in and out. What for? Did he talk to us? Does he know about us? It's just for show, nothing will improve here,” said Zahida Hamad, a woman in her fifties donning a traditional embroidered Palestinian dress.
Siham Salameh, whose shabby two-room flat was picked by camp officials for a brief visit by de Villepin, could not hide her disappointment.
“He didn't ask a thing and just looked around,” said the 55-year-old mother of five who lives here with another 13 relatives.
“I thought he had come to help us out, help everybody out here,” she said visibly frustrated.
De Villepin also visited a clinic run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) before delivering a short speech at a local youth club whose walls were covered with banners proclaiming the Al Amari refugees' right of return home.
“There is no alternative to return,” “No peace without return to our homes,” “The right of return is not outdated,” the signs read.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes in 1948 during the Arab-Israeli war which led to Israel's creation.
Many refugees and their descendants, most of whom live in surrounding Arab countries, hope to return to their land but Israel categorically refuses, saying an influx of millions of Palestinians would destroy the country's Jewish character.
The French foreign minister acknowledged the “reality of four million Palestinian refugees,” and said “Palestinians should recover their rights” while refraining from pledging support to their long-sought goal of return.
“His visit to a refugee camp is of great significance. Israel will get the message,” said the head of the local UNRWA clinic Khaled Al Helou.
“It doesn't mean France supports the right of return but a humane solution to our plight,” he added.
De Villepin met earlier Monday with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who welcomed Israel's formal acceptance of the peace roadmap, an internationally-drafted blueprint which proposes the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |