One of the most urgent crises here in Lebanon's camps is the fact that the few remaining Palestinian hospitals are also nearing collapse, particularly Haifa Hospital in South Beirut's Burj al Barajneh camp. The former two main Palestine Red Crescent Hospitals, Gaza and Akka closed decades ago. These problems are just a sampling of what life has become for Palestinians in Lebanon and those nearly 50,000 from Syria who are still stuck here.
Da'ish has started to capitalize on these problems as pressures mount under the long hot summer days and adequate water and electricity becomes ever more tentative. Some camp residents speculate about what form of 'explosion' will happen during or after Ramadan.
What is Da'ish (ISIS) offering Palestinians?
Firstly, they are pledging Full Return for the nearly 12 million Palestinian refugees scattered around the world of whom approximately 6.4 million whose homes and lands were occupied in 1948 (approximately 55% of the Palestinian people), and of whom 4.5 million live outside historic Palestine with 1.8 million living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Da'ish (ISIS) is also offering an alternative to the half-century of the fake "peace process" and a change in what increasing numbers of refugees claim is the quisling thinking of the current PLO leadership.
Understandably, jihadist appeals are collecting an audience for the reason expressed recently by Dr. Mohsen Saleh of the Zaytona Center in Beirut: "The refugee issue is the core of the Palestinian issue, which is the issue of people who were uprooted from their land in which they lived for thousands of years. These people existed even before the Israelites came to Palestine, and were present during their existence in Palestine and after they were gone. The Zionist project could only materialize after destroying the social fabric of these people, destroying more than 400 (531, ed.) of their villages and cities, confiscating most of their land, and usurping their properties, buildings, factories, and endowments."
On 29/10/2013, the London-based al-Hayat newspaper published a report based on Zionist sources, documenting that the Palestinian 'negotiating team' gave its Israeli counterpart a "position paper" on the core issues of the conflict. These eye-witness accounts claim that the Palestinian team actually offered to waive the right of return for Palestine refugees to their land stolen in 1948. The Palestinian 'negotiating team' would give the refugees a choice between returning to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or some cash reparations, moving to a third country, or staying where they now in 59 camps and three dozen settlements.
On 8/23/2013, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, speaking to an Israeli delegation from the Meretz Party that visited him in Ramallah, reassured and guaranteed the Israelis that the PLO will not ask to return to Jaffa, Acre (on a clear day visible from villages including Maron al Ras in South Lebanon) and Safad (from which nearly one third of 1948 al Nakba refugees fled into Syria and Lebanon as they were forced from their homes.
ISIS is making plain to all who will listen that they reject this 'sellout position' and that every Palestinian on this planet has the inalienable right of Full Return and that this right can never be ceded by any leader and that the Zionist regime putting colonials from the West on their land has no right to even one grain of Palestinian soil.
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