The freezing winter, with shortage of food and drinking water, now faced by some 415 Palestinian deportees, now stranded in a no man's land on the border in Lebanon, at once symbolises the fate of homeless people almost anywhere in the world as well as the ordeal of millions of Arabs in the occupied territories in the Gaza strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights

For all these people, there is no Joy in welcoming the New Year and no hope that tlieir suffering would come to an end soon. It is also the same for other homeless people, like the refugees from Bosnia, the Rohingyas chased out of Myanmar and stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh waiting to go home. Then, there are the famine-stricken millions in Somalia, victims of a growing food shortage in Ethiopia and Innocent civilians, especially women and children, caught in political crossfires elsewhere in the world.

These situations are products of man's Inhumanity to his fellow human beings. Indifference of nation states to fundamental rights of their own citizens.

At this stage, one can only hope that the year 1993 will show a change In the situation, a change that no longer leaves countless uprooted human beings out in the cold.

In this context, a priority case is that of the Palestinians who have been deported from the occupied territories by Israel and who remain stranded on the border of Lebanon. Repeated efforts by humanitarian agencies have failed to persuade both Beirut and Tel Aviv to agree to the supply of even basic relief to the deportees who face the prospects of dying in cold or in starvation. While Israel refuses to let them return to their homes. Lebanon would not let them in either, fearing that such a gesture would amount to a political concession to Tel Aviv. So the region that produced so many prophets who left behind the message of peace and love plays politics even where survival of ordinary men, women and children is at stake. Herein lies a tragedy, a tragedy of Immense magnitude, a tragedy that we can do without.