[Dryerase] [Fwd: Photo Essay - Dheisheh Camp (December 27, 2002); In memory of KifahKhaled Obeid]

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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Photo Essay - Dheisheh Camp (December 27, 2002); In memory of
KifahKhaled Obeid
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2002 16:19:50 -0500 (EST)
From: Jaggi Singh <jaggi at tao.ca>
To: jaggisingh2003 at yahoo.ca


[If anyone can host this photo essay on their website, please get in
touch, and I'll send you a zip file (a little more than a meg). I wish
the
photos were larger, but I needed to shrink them to save space. Stay in
touch all. Happy New Year. -- Jaggi (in occupied Palestine)]

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Photo Essay - Dheisheh Camp
December 27, 2002
In memory of Kifah Khaled Obeid

[To view the photos, go to http://www.palsolidarity.org. Click on
Bethlehem Area reports on the main page, and then click on Photo Essay.]

[NOTE: This essay is posted (December 29, 2002) on the day that another
Palestinian boy, 8 year-old Abdel Karim Salameh, was killed by Israeli
soldiers in Tulkarem; like Kifah, he was shot while throwing stones. The
day before, a 9-year old Palestinian girl, Hanneen Abu Suleiman, was
shot
in the head by Israeli soldiers, according to Palestinian sources, while
playing outside her house in Khan Younis (Gaza). Israeli army sources
claim that Palestinians in the area had earlier fired at an army
outpost,
and that soldiers fired back.]

By Husam Qassis and Jaggi Singh

DHEISHEH REFUGEE CAMP, near Bethlehem, occupied Palestine (December 27,
2002) - Curfew was lifted today, or at least people were ignoring it,
probably because the sun finally came out after a week of cloudy skies
and
rain, and the temperature was a lot warmer.

This afternoon, Husam Qassis, 18, an activist in Beit Sahour, and Jaggi
Singh, a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) from
Montreal, visited the Dheisheh Refugee Camp beside Bethlehem.

Dheisheh Camp is located just beside the main road, connecting Bethlehem
to Hebron in the south and Jerusalem to the north. It was created in
1949,
and is one of the scores of camps that provided humanitarian relief to
the
more than 750,000 Palestinian refugees that fled their villages just
before and after the creation of Israel in 1948 (there are two other
refugee camps in the area as well: Aza and Aida). The Dheisheh camp was
supposed to be a temporary solution, but more than half-a-decade later,
it
still exists, and has slowly transformed from tents and dirt roads to
today's dense concentration of low-rise buildings and narrow laneways.

Dheisheh could almost be considered a poor neighborhood of Bethlehem,
except that camp residents consistently refer to their villages of
origin
in Palestine, which shapes their identity, even generations later.
Several
camp residents knew enough English to tell us, in approximately the same
words, "We dream to go back to our villages."

Dheisheh is home to more than 10,000 refugees, who originate from the
de-populated Arab villages west of Jerusalem and Hebron. On a clear day,
some of these former villages are even within sight of the camp. The
villagers were forced out by the incursions of the Haganah, the Zionist
underground militia that was incorporated into the Israeli Defense
Forces
in 1948.

Today, the 10,000 residents of Dheisheh occupy an area of less than half
a
square kilometre. Until the Israeli army withdrew in 1995, the camp was
surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and occupation soldiers controlled
entry to and from the camp, creating a military-enforced ghetto.
Military
incursions during this period were frequent.

When limited Palestinian autonomy was granted in 1995, one of the first
acts of camp residents was to remove the fence enclosing the camp,
leaving
just the main entry gate as a reminder of the former Israeli presence
(the
gate was painted over in Palestinian colours).

Over half the residents of Dheisheh are children. There are severely
limited playgrounds and open spaces, and most of the kids play in the
narrow laneways of the camp. The economy of the camp was previously
based
on remittances from residents who would work on a temporary basis in
Israel, usually in construction or service jobs in restaurants and
hotels.
With the outbreak of the second intifada, work is now impossible in
Israel, or even in other areas of occupied Palestine due to the
imposition
of checkpoints, roadblocks and curfews. Most of the camp's residents are
financially supported through extended family networks and Islamic
charities.

The temptation to migrate to a nearby Arab state or beyond -- to work in
the service or construction sectors -- is very strong; but all the
residents we talked to considered staying in Dheisheh as a basic act of
resistance against Israeli colonialism.

Dheisheh is a renowned center of resistance to Israeli occupation - like
Balata and Jenin -- and consequently it has been the target of frequent
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) attacks. Dheisheh had its own uprising
three months before the start of the 1987 intifada.

The residents of Dheisheh feel sold out by the "peace process" efforts
of
the Palestinian Authority, which has yet to adequately address their
right
to return to their home villages. According to the brochure for Ibdaa,
the
only cultural center in the camp:

"Dheisheh camp and the Palestinian refugees in general have remained
alienated from the beginning of the peace process; its dreams and
reality
have been ignored in the negotiations for a Palestinian state. This has
heightened the sense of frustration felt in the community and renewed
the
refugees' resolve to continue the struggle against the occupation."

During our visit to Dheisheh, we were accompanied by Nizar Alayasa,
whose
family is from the destroyed Arab village of Zackariah, which was near
Jerusalem. He works in the cultural center, mainly with children,
teaching
them computer skills. Several children he has taught were killed in
incidents with Israeli soliders, mainly rock-throwing [the case of Kifah
Khaled Obeid is described in more detail in caption 9 below].

We asked Nizar if he thought he would ever return back to his village of
origin. He replied, like many others, "I dream of it every day." We then
asked about what he thought about the people who've settled in the place
of his parents and grandparents. His reply (in the original English):

"Maybe we can live together, but only with freedom. We don't want
soldiers, checkpoints or curfew. Just respect."

[The photos in this essay were taken on December 27, 2002 by Husam
Qassis
and Jaggi Singh. The extended photo captions are included below.]

[To view the photos, go to http://www.palsolidarity.org. Click on
Bethlehem Area reports on the main page, and then click on Photo Essay.]


PHOTO CAPTIONS:

1) A view of Dheisheh, atop Dheisheh's highest point. 10,000 refugees
live
within less than half a square kilometer. The camp is on the slope of a
hill.

2) One of the entrances to Dheisheh. This gate was the only entrance and
exit during direct Israeli Occupation Forces' direct control of the
camp.
In 1995, when the camp was put under the Palestinian authority, the
barbed
wire and fences surrounding the camp were taken down. This gate remains
as
a symbol of the Israeli occupation. It has been painted in the
Palestinian
colours.

3) Another view of Dheisheh from beside the entry gate.

4) Children playing outside the gates, beside the main road; one of the
few open spaces near the camp.

5) Graffiti outside the camp. Loose translation of Arabic graffiti (on
left): "Greetings to a martyr! -- Ibrahim Wahadnah. The Cobra Group."
Throughout the visit to Dheisheh, residents made reference to martyrs,
referring to anyone who died fighting against the Israeli occupation.

6) Another graffiti.

7) Arabic graffiti on right (loose translation): "With the people until
victory" (with logo of the PFLP)

8) Arabic graffiti on left (loosely translated): "The blood of Muhammed
Durra comes at a price." Muhammed Durra was the boy who was killed by
IOF
bullets on September 30, 2000, as he hid behind his father crying in
fear,
in an image that has come to define the second intifada. Arabic graffiti
on the right is the signature of Fatah.

9) A stencil of Kifah Khaled Obeid. This stencil is painted all over the
walls of the camp, and beyond in Beit Sahour and Bethlehem. Kifah, 13,
was
a resident of Dheisheh, who died from a bullet wound while throwing
stones
at IOF soldiers at a checkpoint near Bethlehem last November. Kifah was
a
student at the Dheisheh boys school, active in summer camps, and was a
member of a soccer team. At Ibdaa, the local community center, he was
beginning to learn how to use computers [his teacher was Nizar Alayasa,
see caption 18 below]. The day before he died, five children were killed
in Gaza as a result of an unexploded bomb left by the IOF. The next day,
Kifah and other schoolkids decided to march to the Bethlehem-Jerusalem
checkpoint to protest the killings. They held a banner reading (roughly
translated), "The smile of a child is stronger than Israeli weapons."
The
kids also threw rocks at the soldiers. Kifah was shot in the chest with
a
live bullet fired by an IOF soldier. He died on arrival at hospital, and
was buried the next day in the Cemetery of Martyrs at Dheisheh.

10) Arabic graffiti in black (loosely translated): "Fatah youth is a
place
for struggling, not for being quiet." Red graffiti: "We die standing,
not
on our knees" -- People's Party." Stencil of Kifah Khaled Obeid on wall.

11) Main road of Dheisheh.

12) Dheisheh laneway.

13) Residents of Dheisheh. Nizar pointed out that their home was that of
a
martyr.

14) Dheisheh children.

15) Dheisheh children.

16) Dheisheh children.

17) Dheisheh child.

18) Nizar Alayasa, a worker at Dheisheh's Cultural Center, Ibdaa. He is
at
the highest point at Dheisheh, which is built on the slope of a hill.

19) View from the hill in Dheisheh, with main road below.

20) Another view of Dheisheh.

21) View from Bethlehem of the settlement of Gilo (with skyscrapers).
Gilo
is considered by Israel to be a "neighborhood" of Jerusalem, although it
was built on land illegally occupied after 1967. Most of the illegal
settlements around Jerusalem are called "neighborhoods" by Israel. One
settlement in particular, Ma'ale Adumim, will effectively cut the West
Bank in half, and is being considered for annexation into Jerusalem.

22) Another view of the Gilo settlement. Many of the residents of
Dheisheh
originate from de-populated Arab villages near Jerusalem.

23) Main road to Hebron. Dheisheh is on the left.

24) Rubble of Palestinian Authority buildings in Bethlehem, down the
road
from Dheisheh. The buildings were hit by two missiles from Israeli F-16
fighter planes, during the re-occupation of the West Bank in the spring.

25) Another view of the rubble.

26) Rubble with graffiti.