Gazan Refugees in Greece: We Fled Hamas, not Israel - by Evelyn Gordon

...The testimony of these Gazan refugees in Greece provides a rare opportunity to hear what Palestinians say when they’re out of reach of their own repressive governments and can speak freely. It thereby offers a glimpse at the true source of much Palestinian suffering – and a rebuke to all the journalists, diplomats, and NGOs who have collaborated with both Palestinian governments to hide this truth from the world.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
03 June '17..
Link: http://evelyncgordon.com/gazans-in-greece-we-fled-hamas-not-israel/

If you ask Palestinians in either Gaza or the West Bank who’s responsible for their suffering, most would probably say Israel. But what would they say if they were safely overseas and no longer needed to fear their own governments? That’s not a question reporters, diplomats, or nongovernmental organizations usually bother asking. We now have an answer to it, at least with regard to Palestinians who fled Gaza. They left not because of anything Israel did, but because of persecution by Gaza’s Hamas-run government

Their testimony was brought by Haaretz reporter Zvi Bar’el, who went to Greece in search of Syrian refugees but accidentally stumbled instead on Palestinians from Gaza–thousands of them, by their own count. One Gazan refugee estimated there were about 6,000 Palestinians from Gaza in Athens alone. The Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights says the real figure is probably higher.And that’s just those who have been able to leave. Many would like to but are stuck in Gaza because the border crossing to Egypt is open only a few days per month. Even when it’s open, only a few hundred people per day can leave. Osama, one of the Palestinians Bar’el interviewed, said that when he left Gaza (via a cross-border smuggling tunnel) over 25,000 people were on the waiting list to leave via the official border crossing.

And why have so many Gazans fled or tried to flee? The Palestinians Bar’el met had a uniform answer: Hamas. Not a single one of them even mentioned Israel in their responses.

The horrible lives of the Gazans in Jordan? Arabs don't care.

Sewage flows down a street in the Gaza camp for
Palestinian refugees in Jordan.
(MaanImages/Siraj Davis)

Elder of Ziyon..
31 October '12..

From Ma'an:

The Gaza camp in Jordan, near the northwestern historical ruins of Jerrash where the Greco Roman Empire once flourished, was set up by the UN as an emergency measure in 1968.

During the 1967 Arab-Israeli War war, about 12,000 refugees fled from Gaza to this area. It now has a population of about 30,000 Gazans.

Hidden in the outskirts of Jerrash, connected to the rest of civilization by a single neglected dirt road, most tourists have no idea about the camp. Locals are known to respond to visitors' inquiries with a suspicious: "Why do you want to go there?!"

Some tourists wonder if Jerrash municipality wants to keep foreigners out, to hide the dilapidated squalor that is so close to a bustling tourist attraction and well kept city.

Living conditions at the Gaza camp have been described as the worst in Jordan.

Surrounded by an empty desert, its streets are filled with children playing near sewage and trash. The pathways are cluttered with discarded food, old recyclables and other materials, which are burned frequently because garbage collection is unreliable.

(Read full "The horrible lives of the Gazans in Jordan? Arabs don't care.")

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Gazans trying desperately to prove they are Egyptian

Elder of Ziyon
04 November '10

The Hamas-leaning Felesteen newspaper reports that hundreds of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza are trying to go through their family histories to prove that they are really Egyptian, not Palestinian, in order to gain citizenship in Egypt.

Not only residents of Rafah, a town divided between the Gaza and Egyptian side, but even Gazans from Khan Younis and other areas are trying to become Egyptian citizens.

One man is interviewed, saying that he went through months of painstaking research, hiring an Egyptian lawyer to help him, before he could prove to Egypt's satisfaction that his grandfather was Egyptian.

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Cops? Terrorists? Gazans know they're all the same

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War/A Blog
19 September '10

The analysts at Honest Reporting make a significant observation today that goes to the heart of how terrorism is thoroughly interwoven in the day-to-day operations of the jihadist Hamas regime in Gaza.

They remind us about the wrangling over the Gaza war's casualty count, when Hamas (and a good part of the mainstream media) argued against Israel over the definition of civilians? They point out today that Hamas has confirmed that, really, there's no distinction between the Hamas regime's civilian police and the Hamas regime's "resistance" groups who attack Israelis, preferably Israeli civilians (that's what makes them terrorists).

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Homeless Gazans Seize Hamas Building

Daled Amos
22 August '10

Hamas has been anything but easygoing on the Gazans who voted them into office. For one thing, they have been known to suddenly appear on people's doorsteps to evict them within minutes of destroying their homes, and little time to remove their belongings.(2:21 in video below)



Now, it seems that some Gazans are striking back as Homeless Gazans Seize Hamas Government Building:

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The Gazans who are in an open-air prison - in Jordan

Elder of Ziyon
10 August '10

Did you know that there were well over 100,000 Gazans in Jordan with limited rights - and no easy way to get out?

An Arab researcher named Oroub El Abed has been documenting the plight of two little-known groups of Palestinian Arabs - the Gazans who live in Jordan and the PalArabs who live in Egypt.

Here is an excerpt from an article she wrote in Forced Migration Review about the Gazans in Jordan:

Gazans in Jordan are doubly displaced refugees. Forced to move to Gaza as a result of the 1948 war, they fled once more when Israel occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967. Guesstimates of the number of Gazans in Jordan range between 118,000 and 150,000. A small number have entered the Jordanian citizenship scheme via naturalisation or have had the financial resources to acquire citizenship.

On arrival in Jordan, the ex-residents of Gaza were granted temporary Jordanian passports valid for two years but were not granted citizenship rights. The so-called ‘passport’ serves two purposes: it indicates to the Jordanian authorities that the Gazans and their dependents are temporary residents in Jordan and provides them with an international travel document (‘laissez-passer’) potentially enabling access to countries other than Jordan.

The ‘passport’ – which is expensive – has value as an international travel document only if receiving states permit the entry of temporary passport holders. Few countries admit them, because they have no official proof of citizenship. Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and some Gulf States are among those who refuse to honour the document. Any delay in renewing the temporary passport or in applying for one puts an individual at risk of becoming undocumented.

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Humanitarian Crisis? No, Gazans Are Bored!

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
14 July '10

Left-wing propagandists have spent the last several years successfully painting a picture of Gaza as a place where children starve and where all are in need. In reply, Israel and her defenders have attempted to point out that such tales are pure myth and that, in fact, there is no shortage of food or medicine in Gaza despite the limited blockade that has been imposed on the region since Hamas seized power there in a bloody coup. But there’s no need to listen to the Israelis on that point. As the New York Times makes clear in a 2,500-word dispatch published today about life in Gaza, the residents of the strip have no reticence about refuting the lies about a humanitarian crisis:

There are plenty of things to buy in Gaza; goods are brought over the border or smuggled through the tunnels with Egypt. That is not the problem. In fact, talk about food and people here get angry because it implies that their struggle is over subsistence rather than quality of life. The issue is not hunger. It is idleness, uncertainty and despair.

The picture painted in this story of life in Gaza is not pretty. But it makes it clear that what is really bothering Gazans is how boring life in Hamasistan can be. The Gazans chose to be ruled by an Islamist terrorist group dedicated to perpetuating the war against Israel and to the idea that Israel can someday be destroyed. But they think it is unfair to pay any price for the state of belligerency that exists with Israel — even if their basic needs are guaranteed by both the international community and the country they wish to destroy.

To their credit, authors Michael Slackman and Ethan Bronner make clear that the Palestinians’ biggest problem is the civil war being waged between the Hamas and Fatah organizations, as the latter’s decision to shut off electricity to Gaza to get even with Hamas illustrates.

As far as Israel, Palestinians are a bit confused. They desire its destruction, but at the same time, they think it is unfair that they should not be allowed to work there or that trade between Israel and Gaza should be halted because of the terrorist campaigns waged against the Jewish state by the groups Palestinians support.

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