Palestinians in the occupied areas of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel raised 10 million in less than a month to build houses for Syrian refugeesaccording to activists behind the campaign.
“The idea was to collect 100 heaters for 100 houses. And then we find that people are helping and we have a lot,” said Ibrahim Khalil, a 33-year-old social activist from the northern Israeli city of Nazareth.
In the last six years, the Palestinians have been donating food and other essentials to Syrian refugees in the Idilib regionon the border with Turkey, through a non-governmental organization called Almas Compadecidas.
However, the volume of donations this winter season was unprecedented, said Raed Badr, leader of the organization. He believes that videos that circulated on social media of children suffering from the cold, in the snow, motivated people to donate.
“One day I hope they take us to a house because the rain is drowning our tents,” Nada, 11, an orphan who lives with her grandmother, said in a video.
The plan is to build about 3,000 housing units, Badr said. The construction will also include clinics and schools, based on a model posted on the organization’s website.
A call for contributions went viral on social media with the Arabic hashtag “build houses instead of tents”.
The images of homeless families resonated with Palestinians as they suffered as refugees living in tents and tents for years, Khalil said, after being forced to leave their homes or flee in the war over Israel’s creation in 1948.
The civil war in Syria, which was sparked by an uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, has caused the world’s biggest refugee crisis. The war killed an estimated half a million people, and made many more homeless.
Source: CNN Brasil
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