BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee

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Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (2006-2007)
occupation of the area. In the West Bank, most of the camps are established on private land. The 1967-occupied
Palestinian territory are connected to the Israeli electrical grid, and payment for use of electricity is collected
by the Palestinian Authority and transferred to Israel. Since 2003, additional land has been made available by
the Palestinian Authority in the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank for rehousing refugees displaced by Israel’s
military attacks on camps in those areas. Rebuilding efforts are underway in Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip,
where refugee shelters, public infrastructure and UNRWA schools are being rebuilt and repaired after Israel’s
military operations in 2006. (See Emergency Assistance below.)
3.2.5 Economic development
UNRWA micro-finance and micro-enterprise programme
In 1991, UNRWA launched a micro-finance and micro-enterprise programme in the 1967-occupied Palestinian
territory in response to the first intifada and the first Gulf War. At present, this programme constitutes the
largest source of credit to micro-enterprises. The programme was expanded to Jordan and Syria in 2003, and in
2005, a new housing micro-finance project was introduced in the occupied Gaza Strip. In 2006, UNRWA gave
11,264 micro-enterprise loans to increase business development and income-generation, 1,778 solidarity loans
to women, 821 consumer loans to poor people, 145 housing loans to households unable to obtain mortgages,
and 15 loans to small enterprises. Women and young refugee entrepreneurs (under the age of 28) received a
quarter of the micro-enterprise loans each. Since the creation of the programme, over 126,000 loans worth
more than US $131 million have been distributed. However, due to Israeli-imposed closures and movement
restrictions in the OPT, the programme has been unable to achieve operational sustainability and full cost
recovery since 2002. It is nevertheless expanding and self-sufficient in Jordan and Syria.
Economic recovery
Regarding the possibilities of economic development in the OPT, the World Bank noted that “currently, freedom
of movement and access for Palestinians in the West Bank is the exception rather than the norm contrary to
the commitments undertaken in a number of Agreements between the [Government of Israel] and the PA.” 87
According to the Bank, “economic recovery and sustainable growth will require a fundamental reassessment of
closure practices, a restoration of the presumption of movement, and review of Israeli control of the population
registry and other means of dictating the residency of Palestinians within the [West Bank and Gaza Strip] as
embodied in the existing agreements between the [Government of Israel] and the PLO.” 88
3.2.6. Emergency Assistance
Throughout five decades of operation, UNRWA has provided emergency humanitarian assistance during political
and humanitarian crises in its five areas of operation. It has supplied emergency employment generation, food,
cash, medical assistance, remedial education, psychological counselling and post-injury rehabilitation, as well as
repair and reconstruction of refugee shelters and UNRWA infrastructure.
During the early 1980s, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon largely undid the Agency’s work of three decades in the
country. 101 Emergency operations at that time included distributing food rations, blankets, mattresses, kitchen
supplies, clothing, water and medical supplies. Following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Beirut, UNRWA
was left with the task of providing emergency care to the wounded (as well as to the families of the some 3,000
refugees massacred by Israeli-allied Lebanese Phalangist militiamen in the Beirut camps of Sabra and Shatila), as
well as reconstructing camps and Agency infrastructure. Many of the same emergency services were provided to
Palestinian refugees during the first intifada in the OPT.