To the editor:

There's a lesson to be learned from the article "Packed With Refugees, Palestinian Camps Face Grave Threat if Coronavirus Spreads." It's actually a lesson that should have been learned more than seven decades ago: Rather than confine all those people to camps, UNRWA should have been busy resettling them from the very beginning.

Today, only a handful of those living in the "refugee" camps are even refugees; rather, all but at most 30,000 are the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of refugees and internally displaced persons. Their condition is all the more indefensible since they have lived under Arab governance for most of that time, Jordan from 1948 to 1967 and the Palestinian Authority since 1994.

UNRWA, stop confining them and let them start living normal lives.

Sincerely,

Alan Stein