A U.N. agency caring for Palestinian
refugees said Saturday it will launch a field survey among 4.5
million refugees to identify their needs in the camps.

A spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in Jordan told United Press International the survey will be
carried out where refugees live in camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon,
the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The spokesman, who did not want to be identified by name, said the
survey was to provide 62 donor countries and 30 international refugee
organizations with solid statistics on the needs of Palestinian
refugees.

He added the survey will start Sunday in Jordan, where 1.8 million
registered refugees live in 13 camps, and later expand to other host
countries.

The Geneva-based UNRWA was formed in 1950 to provide social,
educational and health services to Palestinians who were forced to
flee their homes in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war when the Jewish state
was established

BAQAA CAMP, Jordan, Aug 15 (Reuters) –
For Palestinian refugee Hilmi Aqel Israel's evacuation of Jewish settlements in Gaza has revived dreams that his people will one day return to their former homes in
what is now Israel.

"For the first time in 50 years I now feel there is hope that the
Palestinian people will one day be free," said 33-year-old Aqel, one
of around 1.8 million Palestinian refugees living in neighbouring
Jordan.

"It has raised hopes that the time will come when the occupation of
Palestine will end."

Amid the poverty and hopelessness of the squalid camps they inhabit,
even young Palestinians who have never set foot in the holy land
yearn one day to return. Many keep the keys to family homes their
parents and grandparents left behind after the creation of Israel in
1948.

Israel's plans to end a 38-year occupation of Gaza, which it captured
along with the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East war, sparked
jubilation among many of the 4 million Palestinian refugees scattered
in Arab countries.

Chanting "Today Gaza and tomorrow Jerusalem", scores of Palestinian
refugees took to the streets of Lebanon's largest camp, Ain
al-Hilweh, on Monday to celebrate.

Brandishing rifles in the air and performing the traditional dabke
dance, they hailed the evacuation as a step toward their eventual
return to their homes in what is now Israel.

"O God, the withdrawal gives me hope the Israelis may withdraw from
the rest of the Palestinian lands and of our return back to our
original homes," said Yasseen Ibrahim, a baker in the crowded camp on
the outskirts of Amman.

Amer Saleem, a teacher in the same camp, said: "Palestine is our land
and it's our homeland which Israel has to leave sooner or later."

PALESTINIAN VICTORY?

For many of the inhabitants living in makeshift homes with corrugated
iron roofs, the sight of Israeli civilians leaving settlements the
World Court has judged illegal, inspired feelings of nationalist
pride and defiance.

Some said the pullout was a victory for militant groups led by Hamas,
which waged armed attacks against Israeli civilians.

"It is the Israeli blood that was shed that forced (Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel) Sharon to retreat and the more the resistance grows
the more Israelis will leave our occupied land," said Khaled Abu
Natour, a grocer in Jordan's Baqaa camp.

Others are less optimistic. They say a long and bitter conflict lies
ahead and fear Israel will give up Gaza but consolidate its hold on
the West Bank to prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state.

"I believe the withdrawal leaves no more than a prison for the people
of Gaza because they have no borders or airport," said Sheikh Ahmad
Abu Sadad, living in the Jordan's Jerash camp.

Refugees also have their own concerns. They fear any future peace
settlement will forego any right of return for millions of
Palestinian refugees to land now inside Israel. They also fear
exclusion from a future Palestinian state.

"I am happy they are leaving, but I will dance in the street only
when Jerusalem is back to us and we are back to it," said Um Nidal, a
mother of 12 living in a camp near Damascus.

"I am willing to give all my sons to the resistance to make this
happen." (Additional reporting by Ali Hashisho in southern Lebanon
and Inal Ersan in Damascus)

Jordan's King Abdullah II vowed Tuesday to oppose settling more
Palestinian refugees in his country amid Arab fears that Israel's
withdrawal from the Gaza Strip may not extend to the West Bank.

Abdullah is concerned that if Israel fails to leave the West Bank,
which Palestinians want as part of a future state, Jordan may be
pressed to settle tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees living in
camps scattered across the region, including Syria and Lebanon.

"I know and do appreciate the fears of some of you that plans may
exist to redraw the map of the region and to settle some historic
issues at the expense of Jordan," Abdullah told an impromptu meeting
with members of parliament, Cabinet and former prime ministers before
he left for Russia.

"We are talking about the issue of resettlement and an alternative
(Jordanian) homeland," he said.

Jordan already hosts 1.8 million Palestinian refugees and their
descendants displaced in two wars with Israel since 1948.

The government argues that accepting more refugees may disturb this
country's fragile economy and its demographic balance.

Abdullah's remarks appeared aimed at Jordanians, who become increasingly
suspicious about Israel peace intentions.

Speculation is rife in Jordan and other Arab capitals that Israel,
which has begun withdrawing Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, may
stop at offering any more territory to the Palestinians in the future.

Abdullah urged Jordanians to confront any plan aiming to "deprive
Palestinians of their right to return to their homeland or establish
their independent state on Palestinian soil, and nowhere else."

"If such a plan exists, it is a plot against the Palestinian people
as much as it is a plot against Jordan," he said. "I should not be
alone in confronting such a plot, if it exists."

On Monday, Abdullah told Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in a
telephone call that the Gaza withdrawal was a "positive step and must
be a starting point for pulling out of the West Bank.

As children in the street chanted "Gaza is liberated," 65-year-old Ayed Suleiman Abu-Hashish broke into tears.

"I can't wait to go back," he said. "I bet it has changed a lot since I left nearly 40 years ago."

For many in this squalid refugee camp, Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip, which began Monday, revived hopes they could return to homes they fled in the 1967 Middle East War. It was unlikely that would happen anytime soon, however.

The fate of refugees - many who also fled land that made up the state of Israel before the war - still must be negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians in so-called final-status talks.

Also at issue in those thorny talks will be the status of Jerusalem, claimed by Palestinians as
their capital but under Israeli control since 1967.

In the meantime, even after the Gaza withdrawal, Israel still commands all entry points into the strip and the West Bank, meaning it can prevent refugees from returning.

Israel has not recognized a general Palestinian "right of return," and was likely to bar the bulk
of refugees from returning to Gaza or the West Bank, from where Israel has also pledged to
withdraw four settlements. So far, Israel has indicated willingness only to allow a limited
number of Arabs to join relatives in pre-1967 Israel under a family reunification plan.

At Gaza Camp's only coffee shop, regulars received free refreshments as they rejoiced over
the Israeli withdrawal.

In one smoke-filled corner, 67-year-old Mohammad al-Ghazawi, wearing a traditional
white-and-black-checked headdress, quizzed his friends.

"Do you think the Israelis will allow us back in Gaza?" he asked, sipping spiced Arabic coffee.

"No" was the quick answer from Ismail Abu-Taha, puffing on a water pipe.

"The Israelis are only maneuvering to show the world that they're giving back lands to
Palestinians, but we're not in their books. We have long been forgotten," he said.

Two blocks away, Umm Mohammad, 72, disagreed.

"Why would they give back the land if they won't allow its owners to go live in it? Don't listen to this nonsense," she said, standing on the doorstep of her shabby convenience store and handing out candy to neighborhood children.

"Palestine is Arab" and "Gaza is liberated" chanted the children, some as young as 5. Waste
flowed along the street from an open sewer at a cluster of rundown brick homes.

Passers-by gave thumbs-up and victory signs to the children, who were leaving a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The organization oversees services - including health care and education - to some 13 refugee camps in Jordan.

Gaza Camp, located west of Jerash, Jordan's famed Roman-ruin city, and about 30 miles north of the capital, Amman, is home to 27,000 Palestinians.

UNRWA estimates that 122,000 Gazans live in Jordan, the largest Arab host to the estimated total of 1.8 million Palestinian refugees. Most of the Gaza natives live in Gaza Camp.

Inside Lebanon's Ein el-Hilweh camp, that country's largest with a population of 75,000
Palestinians, the pullout from Gaza generated joy and hope. Lebanon is third after Jordan and Syria in its number of Palestinians refugees.

Palestinian guerrillas from various factions joined civilians and old women, their heads
covered with white scarves, in an Arabic dance accompanied by bagpipes in the teeming camp.

"When the intefadeh (uprising) began, we felt that something would be achieved. Today, we are sure that this intefadeh has begun achieving the first of its goals with Gaza's independence," said Lt. Col. Maher Shabaitah, who heads the camp's Fatah guerrilla movement office.

Ramzi Qabalawi, 55, a refugee in Lebanon since the 1948 founding of Israel, called the Gaza withdrawal "a great victory" for the Palestinians.

"Had it not been for the resistance and stepped-up attacks on Israel, they (Israelis) would have never thought of withdrawal," he said.

Jubilation at Jordan's Gaza Camp, however, was dimmed by suspicions that the Gaza pullout was merely a tactic to strengthen Israel's grip on the West Bank.

"Any inch of Palestinian land given back to us is good," said Ibrahim Jallad, 35, a sanitation
worker. "But it looks like Gaza will be first and last."

But for Abu-Hashish, the tearful 65-year-old, there was little to think about but returning to
Gaza: "I have a plot of land and a two-story house here, which I'm offering for free to my
Jordanian brothers.

"I want to go home, even if I have to walk all the way."

JAMAL HALABY, Associated Press Writer