The Arab Refugee Dilemma

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SIX years after their flight from Palestine, over 880,000 Arab refugees continue to be a problem in the Middle East. Their great sprawling camps are an eyesore which no visitor can bypass if he travels beyond the heart of most of the Arab capitals. In Beirut, refugee encampments are clustered only a ten-minute drive from the hotels and night clubs of the city's "Riviera" area. In Amman and Damascus the unemployed Palestinians can be found squabbling with the natives for every scarce job opening. The burden of them weighs down the economy and social and political structure of every Arab state where they live.

Today, the number of refugees is even greater than it was in 1948. The extension of the Palestine war in that year and early in 1949, and a yearly natural increase of almost 25,000, has more than doubled the population of the camps despite United Nations appropriations of nearly $427,000,000 to liquidate the problem.

The heaviest concentration of refugees is in Jordan where 500,000 of them constitute nearly a third of the population. In the Egyptian-occupied Gaza strip more than 200,000 are crammed into an eight-mile-wide area which is hardly more than one vast refugee camp; they outnumber the natives there four to one. The 100,000 Palestine refugees in Lebanon have increased that country's population by nearly 10 percent. Only in Syria, where they number 85,000, do they fail to create an almost insurmountable social and economic problem.

By a bare statistical estimate the refugees are better off than the majority of citizens in most of the host countries. They have access to complete health services, and a social service network covers a large part of their needs. The incidence of sickness and the death rate figures are lower among them, and their birth rate is higher. Of the children of school age, 45 percent receive free education. Although their food rations are meager--1,600 calories of flour, pulses, sugar and rice per month--they are sufficient to prevent serious malnutrition...