A visit to Balata Refugee Camp

The olive harvest is finished and we find ourselves with much more free time on our hands and can actually visit places and travel a bit. Few days ago we went to visit Balata Refugee camp which is adjacent to Nablus. Balata is the biggest refugee camp in the West Bank in terms of population. More than 25 000 people are crammed in the area of just one square kilometer(used to be 0.25km2). The camp was created in 1950 after the Nakba or what is the Catastrophe of 1948 for the Palestinians, the year when Israel was established as a state. Palestinian villages that were in the territory of what is nowadays Israel were depopulated and destroyed. Thousands of people became permanent refugees or "internally displaced" inside their own country. Most of the inhabitants of Balata came from Jaffa and surrounding villages or what is now Tel Aviv.

We found this graffiti across from Jacob’s well depicting the history of the camp’s creation:

The happy life Jaffa inhabitants lived before the Nakba

Leaving home...

The UN camp is built or what is to become Balata

The hope to return... Some people do keep the keys from their homes still and hope to be able to return one day. MPT has recored one of the many cases like this: http://mptinpalestine.blogspot.com/2010/05/nakba-and-balata-refugee-camp.html

After a short walk along the camp’s tiny streets we visited Yafa Cultural Center, a NGO inside the camp that organizes activities for its residents. We talked with the staff about the situation in the camp today. They told us a bit of the camp’s history and joked: “What was once tents has become sky-skapers today”. At first residents of the camps were hoping they would be able to return to their villages and refused to accept the idea about any permanent housing; gradually they lost hope and started building concrete houses. Because of the lack of space and the natural growth of the population the houses had to grow horizontally, in place of the spot previously occupied by the tents. There was no space to spare for streets and therefore only very narrow passages came to exist in between the buildings. The lack of space yielded and keeps on yielding a lot of social issues, children are especially affected and they're quite hyperactive.

The main problem today is poverty though. While about 60% of the Balata residents used to work in Israel before the First Intifada this is no longer the case now; the camp went through hell and was basically turned into a prison while occupied by the army during both of the Intifadas. As the checkpoints throughout the West Bank got eased two years ago residents are able to move more freely and gain some economical stability but there’s still 40% of an unemployment rate.

As all oppressed people, people in the camp are avidly interested in politics, in particular in any developments on the political scene concerning the refugee's right to return. At this point our conversation itself deviated towards politics too. It has been more than 60 years of a life as refugees... All these years their life has been and still is at a standstill, there has been no change whatsoever. They last witnessed the Arab Spring, they have seen the world shift and yet nothing happens over here. Our new Yaffa friend himself says he has made many presentations on the refugee issue but sees no point in talking anymore; it hasn’t given any fruits. He said he has always been moderate in his political beliefs and will continue to be but doesn’t see the use in it anymore as well.

"The chain shall certainly break", reads the Arabic

A social worker from Germany was present in the room during this conversation. She said she was here to supervise the construction of a sponsored by the German government mental health clinic in the camp. She seemed very tired as well. They both agreed everyone in the camp needed some psychological assistance and they were about to start running different programs assisting the camp population but this wasn’t a solution to any problem, it was only patching, addressing the symptoms but not the cause. A political solution was needed: one state, no occupation, freedom...

We took more time to walk around the camp, this time we went deeper into the little passageways in between the houses. Children, the main population of this camp, would come out around every corner and demand attention; they don’t see foreigners walking around often. “What’s your name, how are you”, all of them demanded. They were really nice and sweet but from time to time there was a tangible feeling of hyper-activeness in the air, a slight hint of what could easily be ignited to aggressiveness. I tried to disarm them with my utmost abilities for a calm and peaceful presence, smiles and attention and they indeed stayed friendly. We talked to a store owner and his younger friend, they had us sit with them and treated us some candy. They told us about a army raid of both their homes two nights ago. The younger man was doing most of the talking; the store owner looked visibly depressed. I asked the later if I could write a report about the army raid of his house but he said he didn’t want to talk, he was afraid. We met few kids who insisted they wanted to show us something; they took us to the nearby archaeological site of Tell Balata and we spent a lot of time chatting with them there. One of them, a ten year old, asked us if we also had Jewish army in the streets where we lived. On parting the boys asked us for money and were visibly disappointed with the small change we gave them; they wanted to buy a football ball.

I was deadly tired after spending those hours in the camp and I caught myself appreciating the abundance of space we had in Huwwara aftarwards, when walking in the street...