User:Sayerslle/Pauline Cutting

Pauline Cutting -( b.1952 ish ) she became well known because of her time in the Palestinian camp of Bourj el-Barajneh, Beirut.The Palestinian refugee population there had arrived from all over Palestine in 1948, mainly from the Galilee. They had left everything behind and moved over the border to wait for the fighting to end so they could return to their homes.

Having attended Liverpool University and worked in Liverpool she achieved her F.R.C.S. then a locum consultancy at the Medway Hospital in Gillingham, age 32. She worked at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton. Answering a Medical Aid for Palestinians advertisement in the British Medical Journal  for volunteers she  went to work in the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. (she arrived Beirut International Airport 6 December 1985) - The people there faced bombardment, malnutrition and diminishing medical supplies. she spent first week in Chatila ( see Ramadan War (Camp War) may/june 1985the clinic there used also by poor pople from outside - almost all other health services in Lebanon and Beirut privately run so the poor around the camps came to the clinicas patients were not chsrged -She spent 18 months in Beirut, working in make-shift operating theatres. She was awarded an OBE for her work in Beirut, in July 1987.

Amal Militia - snipers belonging to the Amal militia - early in 1985 the Amal militia - with the approval of the Syrians - attacked the camps of Sabra and Chatila and Bourj al Barajneh in southern Beirut. summer 1985 Amal gets artillery mortars and tanks from Syria.

the refugee camp under siege

Book Children of the Siege, first published 1988, is her book about this period.

Tarshiha - 1948 UNRWA set up refugee camps in Lebanon and neighbouring countries t provide temporary shelter - joined by thousands more who fled in 1967 when Israel took what remained of palestine, the WEst Bank and the Gaza Strip.