It’s working out so well…

Swat Valley, Pakistan: Bakht Meena, 80, waits for a tent in Jalozai refugee camp [Emilio Morenatti/AP]

This is from ’24 hours in pictures’, appearing today, at the Guardian…

I looked up this particular refugee camp … of course first off was Wiki:

Jalozai refugee camp, 35 kilometres southwest of Peshawar, Pakistan, was one of the largest of 150 refugee or transit camps in Pakistan, holding Afghan refugees from the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

It had an estimated 70,000 refugees at its peak.

New Jalozai adjoined the original Jalozai camp in November 2000, taking in a new wave of arriving Afghan refugees. The camps briefly received an additional influx of refugees in the period after 9/11, leading up to the United States invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. After the fall of the Taliban, the vast majority of refugees in the Jalozai camp returned home or were relocated elsewhere. In February 2002, with a remaining population of 800, Jalozai camp was formally closed. But some problem elements remained through at least 2003, necessitating Pakistani military raids on the former camp that year. …

Eventually it was shut down…

But here is an interesting tidbit that Wiki tosses out at us:

Osama bin Laden was identified as a visitor to the Jalozai camp in the 1980s on one occasion. Bin Laden had been based around Peshawar since 1981, where he and Dr. Abdullah Yusuf Azzam were running a large contingent of foreign Arabs and material support involved in the Afghan resistance. Haji Dost Mohammad, the Jalozai security chief, and also a resident of Peshawar since 1979, recalled in a Reuters interview in 2001 that Osama bin Laden had visited Jalozai camp in 1987. According to Mr. Mohammad, “Once he came to the camp, 14 years ago, to deliver dates. He came only once. I haven’t seen him since, and at the time I didn’t know who he was.” ^[1]

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May of 2009 – CNN:

JALOZAI REFUGEE CAMP, Pakistan (CNN) — It’s an exodus on an almost biblical scale. And it has produced a mosaic of plastic and canvas that is now home to more than 93,000 people — with more arriving each day.

This is Jalozai refugee camp near Peshawar, suddenly almost a city in its own right as thousands flee the violence raging between the Pakistani army and Taliban fighters.

The United Nations estimates that it’s the biggest movement of people in Pakistan since the country was formed in 1947. Officials say up to 1.8 million people have been forced from their homes.

Food is available at this camp — fruit traders work their way through the avenues of tents. But people here can’t afford to buy much.

They make bread with flour handed out by the United Nations, but they say it’s not enough. “It’s very difficult, there’s lots of jostling,” says Mehboob Shah, a man at the camp. When there is food, he says, “it’s very poor quality — even the cows won’t eat it.”

Sar Bari Khan arrived 15 days ago with his wife and three children. He says his family walked almost 62 miles to escape the fighting. They had to leave his father behind.

snip

And on the edge of the camp, workers are clearing the ground for more tents. There is no sign of this influx ending any time soon.

yes it is all working out so well…

***

Very well:

Israeli towns adopt “loyalty oaths” to bar Arab residents

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 8 June 2009

A community in northern Israel has changed its bylaws to demand that new residents pledge support for “Zionism, Jewish heritage and settlement of the land” in a thinly-veiled attempt to block Arab applicants from gaining admission.

Critics are calling the bylaw, adopted by Manof, home to 170 Jewish families in the Galilee, a local “loyalty oath” similar to a national scheme recently proposed by the far-right party of the government minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Other Jewish communities in the central Galilee — falling under the umbrella of a regional council known as Misgav — are preparing similar bylaws in response to a court petition filed by an Arab couple hoping to build a home in Misgav.

“It looks very much like this is being coordinated by the Misgav council in an attempt to pre-empt the court ruling,” said Ronin Ben Ari, resident of another Misgav community, Mikhmanim, and an opponent of the bylaw change.

Manof’s move comes in the wake of efforts by Ahmed and Fatina Zbeidat, who live in the neighboring Arab town of Sakhnin, to win admission to the Misgav community of Rakafet.

It gets better:

In line with the ruling, the Zbeidats demanded the right to take a suitability test when their application was turned down in 2006.

Examiners found Fatina too “individualistic” for life in a small community while her husband lacked “knowledge of sophisticated interpersonal relations.”

And I am sure something or other in their lives was the wrong color, the wrong religion, the wrong, the wrong, the wrong….  The family dog perhaps was “wrong”….

How many walls can they build?  That big one with the watch towers, cameras, police, military —  the caged walkways to the check points and the this and the that.. is not enough.

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Elie Wiesel is on with Charlie (the transcript is not up yet)…   Now he is nearly weeping (he is down to whispering) at the greatness of the Buchenwald visit.  He says Obama is a man of ”moral vision”. And he says had we learned from the Holocaust there would have been ”no Bosnia, no Cambodia, no Rwanda, no Darfur”…

Oh sweetie.  And what of Gaza?

He adds that he did take issue with Obama (Wiesel heard the Cairo speech on AF1), after speaking of the Holocaust, using, “on the other hand” to speak of Palestinian suffering. There is no “moral equivalency”.

Wiesel says Obama “corrected himself” in a follow up interview with Brokaw.

I bet he did.