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| Al-Awda New York, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition | |
Clifton Man To Observe Refugee Life in Lebanon
This article was published in the Jan. 23rd, 2001 issue of the North Jersey Herald News. Anyone wishing to write a letter to the editor regarding this piece is encouraged to do so by sending emails to letters@heraldandnews.net.
Clifton
Man To Observe Refugee Life in Lebanon
By Eileen Markey
Herald News - Jan 23 2001
PATERSON- When Ribhi Huzien, 24, of Clifton steps off a plane in Beirut next month, he will feel as though he is visiting another world. "I'm walking into the realm of the unknown," he said recently. It's a different world, but one his entire life is focused on understanding, he said.
Huzien and a group of activists and documentary filmmakers will visit Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon to observe conditions and find a way to focus attention on the camps' residents. The group wants to use its time in Lebanon to produce a documentary on life in the camps and then show the film to audiences in America Huzien said.
"We want to bring the voice and narrative of the Palestinian people to the American public," he said. The trip is the first major project of Al-Awda of New York and New Jersey, the local chapter of an international group whose name in Arabic means "The Return." Al-Awda, whose mission is returning Palestinian refugees in Lebanon to their homes in Israel, was founded in April 2000 after a conference on the issue.
More than 600,000 Palestinians left or were forced out of their villages when Israel was founded in 1948. Many went to Jordan, other Arab countries or Palestinian Authority controlled areas in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but 350,000 are living in refugee camps in Lebanon, according to Lebanese government estimates.
"It's been 53 years and we're still waiting," Huzien said, adding that by now there are three generations of people who have lived in the camps. "We hope to address the deplorable conditions they live in and change public opinion" he said of Al-Awda's eight-day trip to the Ein-Al-Henwah and Nahar-Albared camps.
Al-Awda believes all the refugees should be allowed to return to their former homes in Israel. It's a position that is perhaps even more contentious than the control of Jerusalem or the status of the West Bank and Gaza in Middle East peace negotiations. Many in Israel fear the repatriation of thousands of Palestinian refugees would unbalance the social fabric of Israel and- by the sheer number of refugees- dilute the country, making it no longer the Jewish State it was founded to be.
In addition to making the documentary, Al-Awda plans to buy desks, chairs and school supplies for the camps' ramshackle schools and to lay the groundwork for a volunteer program through which American young people could spend summers working with refugees in Ein-Al-Henweh or Nahar-Albared, according to trip organizers.
"We are going to be investigating how and why and where we should build projects so Americans can go and do valuable work in the camps," said Andrew Courtney, a documentary photographer and activist who is part of the Al-Awda trip. He suggested that summer projects might include Palestinian-Americans teaching English in the refugee camps, or training people on how to use computers. "Skills. They need to be hard skills," he said.
Riad Mustafa, a member of the local chapter of the Islamic Association for Palestine, a lobbying and cultural awareness group, said he hopes his group can be involved in publicizing the documentary and developing volunteer programs in the future. "So many things, so many skills our kids have here, they can teach these unfortunate kids," he said.
Huzien, who grew up in Clifton and graduated from Montclair State University, said he's always dreamed of working as a doctor in the refugee camps. He is set to begin medical school in the fall. "It's always been my passion," he said. "As a minority in this country, I've understood what it means to be downtrodden and oppressed; little by little I developed a way to help."
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