| Dheisheh Refugee Camp |
| Introduction |
What does it mean to be a Palestinian refugee? And what is it like
to live in a Palestinian refugee camp?
The impression most people have of refugee camps is that they are poor,
overcrowded dwellings where people live in suffering and misery. At first
glance, the refugee camps may appear run-down, impoverished and lacking in
many vital services.
Often times, non refugee camp residents view the camps with a sort
of a condescending attitude. They regard the camps as "ghettos"
and express their horror that "so many people can live in such little
space". Few seem to realize that no one becomes a refugee by choice.
Even fewer less realize that the majority of refugee camp residents used
to be farmers and were accustomed to living in open space.
It is indeed commendable that the refugees were able to survive in
the camps these past fifty years. At first, and for nearly a decade the
refugees lived each family to a tent. They were impoverished and their
living conditions were extremely harsh. Then toward the late 1950s, the
United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) started building one-room
dwellings for each family known as UNRWA block rooms. A family of up to ten
people lived in each room. There was no electricity and no water (women
had to make daily trips to nearby villages and carry water back to the
camp). To each family, the UNRWA block room was a living room, a kitchen
and a bedroom, all in one.
Over the years, the refugees have been able to add onto these rooms,
or even tear them down and build houses in their place. The process has
been a slow and difficult one. Families have to wait until they have enough
money to complete the construction and this can take two to three years,
if not more.
While the lives of the refugees are full of stories of hardship and
sacrifice, they are also full of stories of achievement. Many refugees
have university degrees and have become successful lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, poets, politicians, civic servants and much more. Theirs is a success story. It is a story of a persevering, resilient and resourceful people who faced all the odds in order to improve their lives while at the same time clinging tenaciously to their identity as refugees and to their right of return to their homeland.
In the past fifty years of 'Nakba', the Palestinian refugee camps
have been a constant reminder of the great injustice done to the Palestinian
people and will remain so until a just political solution to their problem
is reached.
We hope that this web page will be an eye-opener for those
who know nothing about the refugee camps. By telling the story of one camp,
we hope that there will be a better understanding of the refugees and their
plight.
| THE CAMP |
| THE PEOPLE |
| THE CHILDREN OF DHEISHEH |
| FACT SHEET |
Did you know that:
- The majority of the print, radio and television journalists in the Bethlehem area are all refugees from Dheisheh. There are thirteen journalists in Dheisheh, three of them women. Some are correspondents for national Palestinian dailies, others work for Radio Palestine and the rest work for private TV stations in Bethlehem. One woman works as a TV camera-woman and director. Another presents a show on a private Bethlehem TV station and the third writes for an English publication in Arab East Jerusalem.
- There are many working women in Dheisheh, including working mothers. Some women work as nurses, medical lab technicians, teachers, policewomen, civic employees and textile factory workers.
- There is no playground for the children in Dheisheh. Children play in the alleys and streets of the camp because there is no other place for them to play.
- The reason there is a lot of litter in Dheisheh's streets is that there are only nine UNRWA sanitation workers who collect the trash of a population of 10,000. There are no garbage trucks in the camp and the sanitation workers use push-carts, making their job even more difficult.
- During the Intifada, Dheisheh refugee camp was routinely placed under Israeli military curfew.
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