Compared to the Shuafat refugee camp on the outskirts of Jerusalemon a slope
between the Jewish neighborhoods of Pisgat Zeev and French Hill Aida looks
like paradise. There the stench of rotting garbage in the summer sun attacks
the senses as soon as one arrives and remains throughout a visit to the camp.
The barely paved roads seem to have more potholes than smooth surface. In
contrast to Aida the overcrowding here is palpable immediately: Estimates of
the total camp population range from 35 000 to 65 000 people in approximately
1.5 square miles; and as Shuafat is located within Jerusalem’s
municipal borders most residents carry Jerusalem
identity cards. At least half are not registered as refugees.

Both camps are part of a fifty-nine-camp network established to house
Palestinian refugees in the aftermath of Israel’s War of Independence in
1948. Education health and relief services are provided to registered
refugees by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees
(UNRWA) which leased land from the governments of Jordan
Egypt Syria and Lebanon in the 1950s to create the
camps.

In a region where loyalties — and suspicions — run deep and absolute
there is no organization that arouses more ire on the part of many pro-Israel
advocates who say that UNRWA is now the largest nongovernmental organization
(NGO) in the Middle East and that it promulgates everything from “refugeeism”
among the children and grandchildren of 1948 refugees to active support for
Hamas and suicide bombers.

Today UNRWA bears little resemblance to the temporary relief arm of the
United Nations that was formed in 1950 to provide aid to refugees from the 1948
War of Independence. From an original budget of $33.7 million that was used
mainly to distribute food and healthcare to refugees living in tent cities in
Israel Jordan Syria and Lebanon UNRWA now has an annual budget of more than
$1.1 billion and the organization employs 24 000 workers to attend to the
needs of an estimated population of 4.5 million registered refugees — from an
estimated 400 000 to 700 000 who initially abandoned their homes — in camps
located in Jordan Lebanon Syria and Judea and Samaria.

In contrast the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
the agency tasked with resolving all other refugee problems worldwide employs
a quarter of that staff for nearly three times the number of refugees — approximately
6 300 staff to care for a population of 11.4 million refugees worldwide.

The 1951 Refugee Convention establishing the UNHCR spells out that a
refugee is someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for
reasons of race religion nationality membership of a particular social group
or political opinion is outside the country of his nationality and is unable
to or owing to such fear is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of
that country.” Since then UNHCR has offered protection and assistance to tens
of millions of refugees finding durable solutions for many of them.