Palestinian refugees in Egypt

Israeli immigration policy under its Law of Return is a mountain of sarcasms. While deporting tens of thousands of undocumented African immigrants (many back to a war zone), it flies in Ethiopian, Indian, & Peruvian immigrants claiming to be one of the lost tribes of Israel after fundamentalist Christian missionaries filled their heads with such nonsense & even though they were unable to pass repeated DNA tests looking for the sacred Jewish Y-chromosome.

While Zionist scouts are prowling the planet to find those with (or without) that special Y-chromosome to settle & wrest Palestine from its rightful claimants, there are over 5 million registered Palestinian refugees, with over 1.5 million still living in refugee camps in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, & the West Bank. Under Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing, these refugees are not allowed to return to their homeland.

There are also thousands of unregistered refugees who recently (May 15th) joined other Palestinians in commemorating the 65th anniversary of Naqba Day (or Day of Catastrophe), when Zionist paramilitary thugs backed by Britain employed massacres to forcibly expel Palestinians & seize their lands.

The children sitting on plastic sacks of garbage in this photo are the 3rd generation of 3,000 Palestinian refugees from the city of Bir el-Sabae (renamed Beersheba) who fled to Egypt & now live in the impoverished village of Gezirat al-Fadel (about 150 kilometers/93 miles east of Cairo) where the roads are still dirt. The Egyptian government does not allow them access to public sector jobs or free education & health care. Because they’re unable to afford even the low-cost government schools nearby, most are illiterate. Instead of school, the children help their parents sift through garbage for recyclables to sell--one of the few ways they’re allowed to earn a living in Egypt. Homes, made of mud brick with straw & palm leaf roofs, have no kitchens so meals are cooked on portable gas burners.

The UN Relief & Works Agency which provides assistance to registered Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon does not have offices in Egypt & does not offer the Palestinians of Gezirat al-Fadel any aid & for that matter, does not include them in the official count of Palestinian refugees.

Support Palestinian refugees by demanding No US Aid to Israel & by boycotting all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729.)

(Photo/Khalil Hamra/AP)