BADIL

Mohammed Awni Obeid – Cairo, Egypt

Mohammed Awni Obeid is one of 70,000-100,000 Palestinian refugees living in Egypt.1 The majority of refugees in Egypt fled Palestine during the 1967 war. In the first years the Egyptian state, under President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Palestinians were granted equal treatment to Egyptians. But his successor President Anwar Al-Sadat, and to a much greater extent the current President Hosni Mubarak, gradually withdrew the privileges conferred to Palestinian refugees. Now, second and third-generation refugees born and living in Egypt are barred from obtaining permanent resident status in Egypt, and rely on their employment to maintain their residency status.