REFUGEES
Visit Life on the Edge -Jerusalem Refugees

In Shu'fat Camp, the only Palestinian refugee camp located inside the municipal borders of Israeli occupied East Jerusalem, the inhabitants must face their future both as refugees and as Arab Jerusalemites. They continue their tradition of having large families, and they build homes despite the danger of Israel demolishing them. They resist Israeli efforts to transfer them to the West Bank simply by refusing to leave the camp despite its worsening living conditions. Since 1996 Israel has instituted a policy of ID card confiscation in East Jerusalem that revokes the residency rights of Palestinians who cannot prove that Jerusalem is their "center of life."

Indeed so crowded has the camp become that many residents unable to find space to build inside have turned to the land along the perimeter of the camp, despite the fact that Israel has reserved all the land there for the future expansion of nearby Jewish settlement. These residents are in a precarious situation living in "illegal" dwellings in an area that is a prime target for Israeli house demolitions. Arabs build surreptitiously and in haste hoping against hope to create their own contrary facts on the ground.

Yahya Abu Sharif, who moved from al-Bireh back to the camp to maintain his Jerusalem ID didn't want to move to the camp because "no one wants his kid to grow up in the camp." The strategy for building a house is to get the four walls and the ceiling up as soon as possible because the more ceilings the Israeli military helicopters spot from above the better for the builder [more ceilings more trouble to carry out demolitions ].So neighbors join together to determine when to build and to participate in the building itself. Community cooperation is necessary for survival.

In typical Palestinian manner Yahya has put priority on the education of his three children, each of them attending private schools in Jerusalem. So Samer, Maher and Luna spend the day in the classroom-a place of benefit, progress and hope-then return home where the problem of Palestine is literally at their doorstep.

Manal, Yahya's neighbor, lives with her husband and five children in an impossible location. With the best view of the 30,000 Jewish settlement of Pisgat Ze'ev, her house is a cinder-block shack surrounded by muddy earth and puddles of stagnant sewer water. The problem is that she doesn't have the money to repair her sewer system, having run out of cash during the building process.

Manal gestures to the houses above on the hill, "sewage from 200 homes ends up here"-in the puddle. Her children, still smiling, play a game of jumping over the pool of waste by the front door. The idea is to not fall in. The wall surrounding Manal's house, presumably built to drain rain away from the house, is wet, and not with rainwater. The fact is that each house is responsible for its own plumbing, the area not receiving infrastructure assistance from the Israeli Jerusalem municipality or the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) either. Certainly the fact that Yahya and Manal are here at all is testimony to the Palestinian will to survive.

The main road is too narrow for two cars to pass each other, and is crammed with shops, homes and cars parked practically inside shop entrances for lack of space. The dust from all the building going on and the building materials lying about confirm Shu'fat Camp's state of permanent construction. Normally shops fill the ground floor of buildings, with flats and businesses occupying floors one through six or seven. Overcrowding is so severe that people are building over alleys in the spaces between buildings. The camp neighborhoods remain grouped by their original villages, ensuring that pre-1948 community and culture are not forgotten.

The circumstances for the establishment of the Camp distinguish it from other camps. In 1965 the Jordanian government decided to transfer Arab refugees squatting in the Old City's Jewish and adjacent quarters to the area of the camp. Then in 1967 at the beginning of the June War [when Israel occupied the West Bank (including east Jerusalem)and Gaza Strip ]Jordan gave the 25 dunum plot of land to UNRWA as space for Palestinians in flight from the Israeli army, at that time ransacking Jerusalem villages, the Jewish Quarter and al-Muasker Camp. All the refugees who came to the came were being displaced and dispossessed for a second time, having originally come from such 1948 towns and areas as Lod, Beer el-Sabe'(Beer Sheva), Ramleh, Haifa, Hebron area and west Jerusalem villages that had been subject to Israeli attack. In 1967 the population of the camp was 3,300,today it is almost 25,000.Israel has never allowed the borders of the camp to be expanded and the land is prime for the expansion and connection of three surrounding Jewish settlements, Pisgat Zeev, Maale Adumim and Neve Yakov. Many of the refugees have been offered bribes in cash to leave by agents working for Israeli settler groups, but they refuse, firm in their faith to remain where they are-holding on to the dream of Palestine, Jerusalem and the memory of homes left behind in the wake of war. The Palestinian Authority can do little to help the camp since under peace agreements with Israel they have no jurisdiction within Jerusalem.

People do what they can to find relief. In the short free time that there is, people watching is a favorite activity. In the evenings the men bring chairs outside to sit and exchange the day's news, smoke and drink coffee. A walk along the main street means parading in front of them as they sit with their chairs leaned back against front doors and walls amidst traffic honking horns and dust. There's little cultural life here. Refugee life primarily consists of work and family; anything else, such as taking a trip outside the camp is a luxury. Iyyad,27,and Yahya,20,work as cleaners at Hebrew University in Jerusalem bringing home about $450 a month. Many young refugee men in their twenties and thirties work as laborers in Israel for a better pay. Most men of Iyyad's and Yahya's age have been politically active in the struggle to liberate Palestine and these two are no exception. But they feel that today's politics have compromised their cause and brought little improvement to daily life in the camp. Yahya believes that the future is about individual choices; it seems doubtful, however, that he and his best friend will have many. It is likely that they will continue labor for $450 a month as cleaners in the University. Both of their fathers' worked in maintenance, also at Hebrew University. Their story epitomizes the lack of progress in employment in Palestinian refugee life from one generation to the next.(When Iyyad is asked)what the future holds for his two daughters, who have been running in and out of the blue- jeans shop asking for bubble-gum money. He replies with some bitterness," what do you want m to say, that one will be a doctor and the other a professor?" "I'll wait till they're 16 or 17 until marrying them [off ]."And so the girls cherish their time as girls, now privileged, allowed to run and play and blow bubbles in the space of the men, the public space of Shu'fat's main street. When they reach the age of marriage, they will lose these moments of freedom. In the evenings, women of the camp are usually indoors, in their exclusive women's space-caring for children and visiting with family and friends.

(When Iyyad and Yahya are asked)what would they change, if they could change one thing about their lives. Yahya would like to visit a green place with fresh air and space to move about -"maybe inside Israel," he says, "where I wouldn't be living like a sardine." And Iyyad has wanted to visit America since the age of 16,emphasizing that he'd like to go only because Palestine is not free. For if Palestine were free, he would have "hope to leave the camp."

Directions:
To reach the camp from the West Bank without a Jerusalem ID you have to take one of the green plated West Bank taxis on a long detour around al-Ram Israeli checkpoint and then along the 'Anata road, which eventually drops yooff in the camp. If you have a Jerusalem ID or hold a foreign passport you can get to the camp from the main Jerusalem-Ramallah road, Nablus Road. Near the camp there are signs for Beit Hanina, Shu'fat, and of course the settlements, but no sign for Shu'fat Camp. You have to follow a circuitous route through buildings indicative of occupation-an Israeli military installation not quite out of use, and a veterinary hospital with signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English. You must then pass through a short tunnel and across a main highway leading into Jerusalem. When you spot the Israeli soldiers on the left side of the street, at their makeshift roadblock for checking Arab taxis and other vehicles, you know you are close to the camp. Finally the Shu'fat Girl's School emerges from a small mountain of earth and rubble, surrounded with barbed wire. Everything inside the barbed wire fences is "the camp. "And turquoise UNRWA signs with white writing inform you that you're there! Excerpts from "Shu'fat Camp: Life on the Edge for Jerusalem Refugees", Jerusalem Quarterly File,No.6,Autumn 1999.