A Palestinian Refugee Camp in Bethlehem

Friends:
We've finally come to a breathing place in our travels abroad--the Orthodox Academy of Crete, on the island of Crete. We arrived here on Monday evening after spending the weekend with old friends in north central Greece (more about that on another blog). We had rented a car on arrival from Israel in Athens and drove up to Trikala, Greece, last Friday.
Now we are finally at a place where we can unpack our suitcases and feel like we can catch our breath. The Orthodox Academy of Crete is a conference/retreat center of the Greek Orthodox Church of Crete. They are giving us a 3 bedroom apartment (very simply furnished) so that when our girls come later in April, they too can stay with us. So yesterday Loretta and I were able to unwind and unpack and settle in a little. It was the Greek national holiday of indepence from the Turks dating back to March 25, 1821, and of course March 25 is also the religious feast of the Annunciation of Christ's birth to Mary. So we attended the church liturgy yesterday morning, and then the parades and speechs following that, here in the village of Kolymbari.
For several blogs, I want to go back and pick up some of our experiences in Israel/Palestine that I didn't have time to write about when we were there. Today the subject is our visit to the Palestinian Refugee Camp at Bethlehem on Wednesday, March 12. Our CPT delegation was privileged to visit this camp on the south edge of Bethlehem and to be guests in the camp for the night.
The Duheisha Refugee Camp was established in 1948 for Palestinian refugees from the villages of East Jerusalem, driven out by the newly established state of Israel. Originally, there were 3,000 refugees in this camp, who lived in tents. Today the camp houses 12,000 refugees on the same piece of land that housed the 3,000 placed there 60 years ago! Now the people live in houses and apartments that look much like the rest of the city of Bethlehem, but since there is so little room, they can only add another floor where this is possible on this rough terrain.
Our host at the camp was a young man in his 30's with a wife and two children. He works at the Badil Refugee Center in Bethlehem. Their family lives with his large extended family in a jumble of apartments. We were served a delicious supper of chicken, rice, cauliflower, and salad, sitting around the room on mats spread out on the floor. Then our host took us on a walking tour of the camp, up and down the very narrow lanes, many of them far too narrow to accomodate vehicles.
When we came back to our lodging, our host told us his story in good English. His father was born the night his grandparents fled their ancestral village some 20 miles north of the camp, outside Jerusalem. His grandparents were driven from their village by an Israeli artillery attack, and his father was born to his grandmother "on the run." For 60 years, this family has lived in this camp. One of his brothers was killed in March, 2002, by the Israeli military, and a younger brother was deported to Gaza by the Israelis at the age of 18 at about the same time. This brother still has to live in Gaza. His mother went once to visit this son in the past 6 years. She had to travel for 45 days through 3 or 4 countries in order to see her son.
We had a long conversation with our host. He and all of these refugees are of course Muslim. He stressed how close knit their community is, and how important education is to maintain their culture and their identity as a people. I asked whether the children and youth, exposed to TV and the internet as they are, do not want to leave the difficult life of this refugee camp and immigrate somewhere else, as young people in our rural communities leave for life in the city. He said that on the contrary, children have a stronger sense of identity than ever. When asked where they are from, they will tell you they are from their native village in East Jerusalem, not from this refugee camp!
Our host told us his family used to visit the site of his ancestral village, a rural farming community, demolished and abandoned by the Israelis after his family fled. He told how once as a child he was feeling sick before a visit to this demolished village, but as they came to the place he became well again. Now it is impossible for anyone from this camp to enter Israel proper or visit the place they came from, though it is only a few miles away. The people in this camp are virtually prisoners in this small, highly populated place. They stay because if they leave, they lose all claim to the place from which they were taken.
These are a beautiful, peaceful, hospitable people. They live in large, close, extended family units. (The apartments we stayed in were new apartments designed for family members soon to be married. We were men in one apartment and women in the other.) In the evening, a young woman who works for a handicraft cooperative came and showed us the handwork of the women in the camp and offered items for us to buy. And there are children everywhere! It seems to me that having children is one of the acts of resistance by an oppressed people. It is their statement that they are not going away, and that they will outlast the oppression. The world, and the Israeli government, will need to find a place for these people, now refugees for 60 long years! They surely have a place in my heart!!
Roy