Blog #9 - Balata: the occupation of body and
mind - Thursday 6/20/13
Visiting and staying overnight at the Balata Refugee Camp in
the Yafa Cultural Center guest house is always a sobering reality check and
every year the camp feels more desperate. Mahmoud, the 47 year old head
of the health unit at the camp says nothing that changes my mind.
Balata, one
of the camps just outside of Nablus, is the most populated Palestinian refugee
camp and is a mirror of all the other camps where generations of refugees have
waited and fought and survived for decades. It was established in the early
1950s by the UN after the 830,000 refugees had lived without official support
for two years all over the West Bank and surrounding Arab countries, in caves,
in the mountains, churches, schools and mosques.
UNRWA,
first established in 1949 ostensibly to deal with the temporary refugee crisis,
built the primitive tent camps. They rented one square kilometer for the 5,000
refugees that came to Balata, most having fled from the Jaffa area. We see a
photo from 1953, a clearly temporary arrangement: rows of tents with a stately
camel standing in front. After five years, UNRWA started building small
units, three by three meters for each family, (that is probably the size of
your smallest bathroom). Imagine a mother from a middle class family from Jaffa,
torn from all that she knows, trying to deal with her many, many
children, a humiliated and unemployed husband, minimal resources, food
handouts, poor sanitation and a recent massive amount of trauma. And then
crowd everyone together in a totally inhumane situation. That is the history of
Balata. But the human spirit is strong and gradually families expanded their
living spaces and added rooms in an unplanned jumble of construction.
By the mid
1960s (this mother has been struggling now for more than a decade) an
infrastructure began to develop, a sewer system evolved, but horizontal
expansion reached its limits and families started building vertically.
Mahmoud’s
grandfather was born in Haifa and came to the camp when his son was around ten
years old. He had owned a successful restaurant and guest house, but fled
when the bombing started, attempted to return for his belongings but was
unsuccessful, then fled with his family to Jenin, Nablus, living in the
mountains until he arrived at Balata. This proud, wealthy businessman had lost
everything and was now totally dependent on UNRWA. Mahmoud’s mother was born in
August 1948. Her family (including the very pregnant wife), walked from
the area near Lydd to a cave in Rafidia where she was born. After a year
living in the cave, the family moved to Balata Refugee Camp where his
grandfather sold vegetables. Mahmoud’s parents met in the camp, had seven
children living in a 60 square meter house with family and grandparents.
Because of the desperate living conditions, many of the refugees have left for
Jordan, other cities in the Middle East, the Gulf, Europe, and the US.
According
to UN statistics, everyone in the camp is officially registered as a refugee
and by the end of 2012, some 29,000 people were crowded together, each house 60
to 80 square meters, three to four generations in a house, no privacy and no
space. The houses are all attached to each other so, “You hear everybody’s
business, privacy is nonexistent, don’t even know what it means, everybody is
in everybody’s business.” Most houses are dark and humid, and there is
mold and other health hazards.
This
creates much social stress, disputes, and psychological problems.
Not
surprisingly, Balata became the political leader of refugee camps and has a
long history of uprisings, demonstrations, and encounters with the IDF.
The First Intifada started here and the first martyr died here. During the
Second Intifada, there were large numbers of militants and guns, and a high
level of violence within the camp and against the camp, 246 people were killed,
and almost every adult male has been in Israeli prisons.
The camp
was largely a working class area before 2000; 60% of the men worked in
Israel. After 2000 and the start of the Intifada, the camp was totally
shut down, surrounded by barbed wire, all entrances closed, soldiers were
everywhere, curfews from one to 100 days were common. We became, “a gated
community,” Mahmoud remarks ironically. In 2002, every three days, the
curfew was lifted for a few hours so that families could get food, the UN could
bring in supplies, the sick could get medical care. The children did not attend
school and the educational system was destroyed. Workers were unemployed,
snipers were everywhere, and the separation wall began its intimidating
construction, permits were virtually impossible. “We were guilty until
proven innocent.”
By 2006,
things started to calm down, the Palestinian Authority restored some security,
but it became clear they were protecting the Israeli settlers more than the
local Palestinians. Settlements expanded and the restrictions on the movement
of Palestinians became tighter. The camp is clearly a pressure cooker waiting
to explode as the economic and living situations get worse and worse, there is
more corruption, poverty, and unemployment. There is no functional
economy, the Israelis control birth certificates, business licenses, export
licenses, etc. While income has remained stable since 2004, prices have
increased five to six times. In 2004 one kilo of bread cost one shekel; it is
now four shekels. Businesses are shutting down.
More
recently laborers have been able to get work permits into Israel but never more
than 10% of the men who apply. 5 to 10% of the workers sneak into Israel
illegally, the PA hires 25-30 % of Palestinian workers, the private sector
employs 10-15%. Unemployment in Balata, however, is currently 46% and
higher in people under 29.
There are
three UNRWA schools from first to ninth grade with 6,000 children ages 6 to15.
After ninth grade students go outside the camp for public education. As
you can imagine, the classes are overcrowded, underfunded, and inadequate to
the needs of the students. The enormous numbers of young people is a
serious problem; there is no space in the camp, no playgrounds, they “can’t
breath.” The children born in the First Intifada were the fighters in the Second
Intifada and have known no other life. They have witnessed or experienced more
arrests, killings, bombings, suicide bombings, and social problems than we can
possible imagine.
Mahmoud
then focuses on Palestinians in general in the West Bank. He notes that
amongst the educated, unemployment is 56%. “I have 252,000 young people in
Palestinian universities, when they graduate, how many will get a job?” They
rarely can travel and there is no functional economy. He talks about area C
(under full Israeli control), where the PA had plans to build a new city, there
were blueprints, money was raised, engineers were ready, and on the day the
project was due to start, the IDF declared the area a closed military
zone. A large part of Jericho is very fertile with dates and palm
trees. 2,000 Palestinian families lived there, but the Israelis seized
their land, leaving 5% to the Palestinians. “What kind of businesses can you
create here?” So much for the former prime minister’s plans for an economic
miracle.
“In the
past, the Gulf was our Mecca, but after the first Gulf War, they kicked us out
of Kuwait.” Instead of help from “my Gulf brothers,” obtaining passports
and traveling have become more challenging. So Palestinians feel increasingly
cornered by Israelis and Arabs, with no options. “What will happen, they
becoming suicidal, very violent.” This is the first time I have heard of
suicide in Palestinian society except for the rare suicide bomber, but now it
is becoming more common.
Mahmoud
runs a psychosocial project; their biggest target is the youth, particularly in
the boys’ school, fifth to ninth grade. I can hear the anger and
frustration in his voice when he explains that the schools are awful, with high
levels of violence, little education, a 50% illiteracy rate. School means
nothing; the students have nothing to look forward to, there are problems at
home and in the street. There are increasing difficulties with all kinds
of drug abuse and more children are committing suicide. He tells us
a chilling story of a child who tried to enter an Israeli settlement, unarmed.
“Why? Suicide is forbidden in Islam, but if killed, then becomes a
martyr. If not killed, then he goes to prison, is fed, smoking, hanging
with friends. This happens daily, because there is no solution, no
future.” Another chilling story: two nights ago, the Israelis
arrested four young people, this happens twice a week. “But nobody is doing
anything and nobody is even paying attention. Why are they getting
arrested?” All four students were about to take their high stakes high
school diploma exam; now their lives are effectively destroyed.
Mahmoud’s
program provides psychosocial support, individual and family counseling inside
the school. In each school there is one counselor for 2,000 children (almost
all have some PTSD). They provide lots of activities, music therapy,
psychodrama, literacy. He finds the illiterate are the trouble makers,
but, “They are lost,” often getting up early to work in the vegetable market to
support their mothers before coming to an increasingly irrelevant school.
Most violent kids are sons of martyrs. Now these children beat their
parents. They have experienced the humiliation of their parents at the
checkpoints, the night time arrests, where the whole family is terrorized,
beaten and the father and mother are humiliated in front of their
children. The Israeli forces have effectively attacked the psyches and
sanity of Palestinian children and destroyed the functions and authority of
previous healthy families.
Mahmoud
explains that in the past, they did not have those problems, respect for his
parents was absolute. He got out of Balata through education, a degree
from Birzeit University. “There is no other inheritance.” He has three sisters
and three brothers, all well educated: a nurse, a lawyer, a marketer, a
hospital director, an advisor for Fayyad on media, and one living in Rome,
practicing alternative medicine. The next generation from Balata will not
have these strengths or these options. “I will never live in Balata again, I
will never raise my children in Balata. This is a very bad place, anyone
would leave if given the opportunity. 65 yrs is too long.”
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