World Refugee Day...a station for rebuilding lives

Yesterday, Thursday, the world commemorated World Refugee Day, which is a global day designated by the United Nations in honor of refugees around the world, and falls on June 20 of each year. This day highlights the determination and courage of people forced to flee their homelands to escape conflict or persecution. World Refugee Day is also an occasion to mobilize sympathy and understanding for their plight and acknowledge their determination to rebuild their lives.

Since World Refugee Day highlights the rights, needs and dreams of refugees, and helps mobilize political will and resources so that refugees can succeed and not just survive, it is important to protect and improve the lives of refugees every day, and it is necessary here to highlight the largest and most important refugee issue in the world. It is the story of the refugees of the Palestinian people as a result of the occupation and its expulsion of them from the Palestinian land to many countries in the diaspora, and Dr. Ola Awad, head of the Central Bureau of Statistics, did well when she reviewed the reality and statistics of the Palestinian refugees on this occasion to keep the issue of the Palestinian refugee and the story of his displacement fresh in the minds of those who try to always remember it. He forgets this strategic issue in our Palestinian history.

The Central Bureau of Statistics says that there are more than 6 million refugees registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Palestine and the diaspora, and they are suffering from asylum as a result of their forced displacement from their lands during the Nakba of 1948.

Among the total refugees are about 2.5 million in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or 42 percent of them (15 percent in the West Bank and 27 percent in the Gaza Strip), according to the statement.

The percentage of refugees in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip amounted to about 42.2 percent of the total Palestinian residents in 2017.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, “the number of Palestinian and Arab martyrs” since the Nakba in 1948 until today (inside and outside Palestine) exceeded “136 thousand martyrs.”

These numbers and many others are part of a necessary reminder of the importance of keeping the refugee issue before us on a daily basis, especially with the continuation of the brutal Israeli aggression that has deepened the wounds of the refugees and displaced people of Gaza and imposed a new displacement story on a large number of them.

The issue of the Palestinian refugees, on the occasion of commemorating World Refugee Day, calls for an influential and profound international and global stance to demand the return of the refugees who were expelled by the occupation from their homes, homes, villages and cities, so that this occasion becomes a practical station for rebuilding the lives of refugees in their homeland because they deserve this moral building towards the goal of freedom and independence.