The Palestinians

The Palestinian people are today geographically dispersed. From the end of World War One to 1947, Palestine, formerly under Ottoman rule, was administered under a British mandate.

The passage of UN General Assembly Resolution 181 in November 1947 in favour of the partition of Palestine, was approved by the Jewish Agency, but rejected by Palestinian Arabs.

The war that followed in 1948 is known to Israelis as the War of Independence and to Palestinians as al-Nakba , the Catastrophe.

The conflict created a large number of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced people. Many 1948 refugees were displaced again during the 1967 war with Israel which also created a new generation of refugees, not recognised by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

Today, Palestinians live throughout historic Palestine - in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories - and in refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Jordan and the Syrian Arab Republic.

Where we work

MAP works in: ·West Bank / Gaza Strip -East Jerusalem -Israel ·Lebanon ·Iraq/Syria

Our local field offices work closely with partner organisations on the ground to identify need and to ensure that MAP can provide support to the health and medical needs of some of the most vulnerable Palestinian communities.

The realities of the occupation and the ongoing conflict with Israel require MAP to work flexibly in often difficult and unpredicable circumstances to provide emergency aid where it is needed and to support the development of sustainable solutions to long-term problems.

Below are examples of recent projects which MAP has supported. To read more about our projects, visit the Our Work pages. To learn more about MAP's partner organisations and for links to their webpages, visit our Partners page.

The community based rehabilitiation programme for disabled children aims at improving quality of life for disabled children in four neighbourhoods of Gaza City (Tufah, Zaytun, Turkman and Jdaida). Working with the Palestine Save the Children Foundation, MAP aims to raise community awareness of diabled rights and facilitate the provision of rehabilitation services including physiotherapy, occupational therapy and psychological support.
In partnership with the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association (PFPPA), MAP is working to raise awareness of sexual and reproductive health and rights among young people in rural areas around Hebron . The project, due to launch in December 2005, will use the Youth to Youth method in which young volunteers will be trained and then supported by staff from PFPPA to raise awareness in their own communities.
MAP is currently supporting a one year water quality monitoring project in the unregistered Palestinian camps in Lebanon. Water samples are being collected from households across the camps. These will then be analysed to show exposure to water borne diseases and chemical contamination of the water table. Information such as this is not systematically collected in Lebanon, making this project particularly important. MAP's local partner in this project is PARD, Popular Aid for Relief and Development.
Working with the Palestinian Health Work Committees, MAP is seeking to raise awareness of nutrition, reproductive health, adolesence and child health among young women in Jerusalem .
Throughout the month of Ramadan, MAP facilitated the distribution of food parcels many of the neediest families throughout northern, southern and central Gaza . This programme has proved particularly successful in the past and MAP worked with the Palestinian Youth Union again in 2005 to deliver food baskets to households with no continuous source of income, those headed by women with children, to larger households and those who have lost their homes, farms or means of income generation due to the recurrent conflict.
MAP and the Early Childhood Resource Center are working together to provide training and capacity-building for 45 kindergarten teachers from rural communities and refugee camps in and around Nablus and Hebron. Adopting a holistic approach to the psychological, social, emotional and physical health of children, the project aims to upgrade teachers' skills in early childhood education and development and provide specialised training in gender, health, first aid and special needs.

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