Jalazone

I’ll admit to my nativity when it comes what the situation is really like here in the occupied territories. When I arrived, as many others, I thought I was walking into a very dangerous and volatile area. Not to say I’m not exactly in the safest place, but I’m not walking onto a live battlefield. Yes, I was being quiet stupid about it, but it’s hard not to until you see it for yourself. Regardless, I was proven wrong: I’ve fallen in love with the place.

Then there was my second level of naiveté: I honestly thought refugees camps here consisted of people living out of tents. That for the past 60 years, there were thousands of people per camp living in tents, with one or two pots and pans each, makeshifts schools, and kids playing in the dirt. I really couldn’t have been more wrong in this regards.

Today I visited my first refugee camp, Jalazone, 15 mins away from Ramallah (or 5 if we could use the settler road). Here goes…

Units
The camps are not a collection of tents anymore. In my eyes, they just look like impoverish neighborhoods. Small homes sharing walls with one another, alleys running rampant with children, and garbage littering the so called streets. Granted, some are worse off than others, I won’t discredit that. But this is why I never noticed the camp we pass every day on our way to school.

Yes, the camps started off as tents. About ten years after the Nakba in ‘48, UNRWA began to replace the refugee tents with small units. These units were basically four by four rooms that were built as homes, one per refugee family. Regardless of the size of your family. Over the years, depending on the amount of money one had, family expanded these units upwards, building more room for themselves. The buildings are all built right next to one another, there really isn’t any room to move except for small alleys barely big enough for a car to pass through. The streets belong to the children who call them their playgrounds. There are camps that still consists of tents, but you can almost think of refugee camps as having stages. The first stage is a tent (such as the camps between Syria and Iraq, that I’m working on), and second unit homes, finally third, any additions the refugees themselves can afford to make.


Life
I asked my host, why don’t the people move out of the camps? Poverty. The surrounding land is quiet expensive, so it’s not the easiest thing for people to buy land, and rebuild their lives. Considering that most of the land in the West Bank is still controlled by the Israeli government, Palestinians cannot easily get permits to build and buy land. In addition, the little amount of land that belongs to the PA, is highly expensive considering the total lack of land.

How much does UNRWA really do for the camps? Unfortunately, very little. The PA? HA. Nothing. As my host put it, basically anything that the refugees have needed has been supplied or found themselves. They’ve built their own houses, establish their own stores, water, electricity, etc. I think that UNRWA at least facilities getting the utilities to the camp in the beginning, but after that it seems like it’s left up the refugees themselves to maintain them. I feel pity on UNRWA in some senses. They have a lot of people to take care of, and god knows the lack of funding they have. It’s not easy to provide assistance to over 1.4 million refugees still living in camps.

What bothers me more is the lack of interest on behalf of the PA. From what I’ve heard, the consensus is that they don’t want the condition of the refugees to improve, just so they can make a political point. What I don’t understand is that there are plenty of other things they can point to make the same anti occupation / “pity us” statement, without hurting their own. This is just ridiculous; it’s a form of self suppression. Come on!

Sorry. It’s just angering. That’s all…. Moving on now, this is not to supposed to be about my reflections…yet.

But there’s more about life for refugees. Especially if you’re still living in a camp, you are looked down upon by other Palestinians even. Why? I can’t say, it’s may just be an association with poverty, or that they are a burden upon the local Palestinians who were lucky enough to live in the West Bank from the very beginning. My host had once gone to Beirzet University to recruit some volunteers for the women’s center in the camp. He was met with open disgust, and told that the school would never send their young women to work in a disgusting place like a refugee camp! This coming from someone, who was also a refugee, but just happened to create a life again for herself. Who would have thought?

FYI : Later on, with my host’s pressure and honest rebuttle (denouncing the negative impression of a refugee camp and the people within) a program was started to send volunteers from the university. That still doesn’t change the overall perception that locals have towards refugees, but it’s a step.

Children
So then we come to talking about half of the refugee population: children. In Jalazone they found me very funny to look at for some reason. I know, I’m funny looking but still, they would stop their games, wave and say HI, followed by a fit of giggles. And not, HI in Arabic, but literally HI. I’m not sure if they were daring each other to speak to the foreigner or what. It was cute. The schooling situation for these children isn’t the best, as expected. The only free schools per se in the camp are up till 9th grade, after that those with enough money can send their children into the cities to study, otherwise that’s the end of the education for many. There’s a constant circle of poverty and illiteracy that’s very hard to break out of. What’s sad is that these are people who had well off lives before they left everything and moved 60 years ago.

Hospitality
I went to the camp to visit a cultural center that I’m hoping to spend some time volunteering with. The current member who was hosting me, was almost too generous, taking me on a walk around the camp, and introducing me to everyone he knew. In addition, he insisted I sit with him and his family for dinner. (ps. Really good food!) I would have rather avoided eating or imposing, but any more than the polite, no thanks isn’t taken very well in the Middle East. It’s an insult to refuse hospitality. I used to think my culture was strict about hospitality, but the Arab culture is worse.

Afterthoughts
I can’t say that I was extremely shocked by visiting the camp. Partially because in my head I thought I was going to see tents. Homes, no matter how small or dirty, are still a big step up from tents. So I was basically prepared for the worse. This doesn’t mean it didn’t make my blood boil though. Knowing that even the PA is almost trying to keep the refugee camps miserable is horrible. These are people, these are their people. Children, who are born knowing nothing else but this life. On the surface, yes life in these camps seems similar to just being an impoverish neighborhood. Unfortunately, it’s not even a neighborhood, it’s a camp that has no form of government even. None of the camps are “towns”, they don’t have any law enforcement, regular supervising bodies or anything. Recently, in Jalzone they established a committee with 2 members from each political party, just so that the people in the camp would have a mechanism to communicate with neighboring villages etc. It’s a step, but again a very small and minute one.

International organizations have tried to help improve conditions for minors, and women, but even this has been met with resistance. I was unaware of the level of conservativeness present in the OPT, mostly because I live in Ramallah, one of the most liberal cities here. Woops J My host told me about a sermon that was given in the local mosque once, telling the men that a women’s center was wrong, and basically empowering women a bit too much! Furthermore, when it comes to the integration of sexes, it’s pretty much a mute point. All activities must be segregated. This level of conservativeness makes it a bit harder for international organizations to actually do much. Much more detail about why they can’t work within in, well I leave that you to realize.

In the end, my concern is more so why there isn’t more pressure to get the refugees to move up and out of the camps. I understand that it’s not a concern for many. I’ve already spoken about the PA’s position, and well, it’s not like the Israeli government will lift a finger (let’s not forget that the Intifadas both began from refugee camps, so I doubt they have an interest). That leaves NGOs etc, that seem to be more focused on more localized activities and solutions, or they work on peace-making. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d like to see something that actually can facilities men, and young boys to move up and out of the camps. I can’t say I know how, but it seems like there a gap in the assistance there.

Well, there’s a penny for your thoughts. :-)