Although most people visit the churches and Christian sites when they come to Bethlehem, I chose to spend the time with Salah, my guide, on a political tour that would encompass Palestinian history and culture. What better place to begin than in a refugee camp?
Welcome to Aida, a refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem and home to about 3500 people. Established in 1950, it sits on less than 1/4 square mile.
The arched “lock and key” through which one enters the camp symbolizes the Palestinian’s perceived right to return to the property they left behind in Israel and the Palestinian territories as a result of the 1948 Palestine war and the 1967 Six-Day War.
Immediately before the arch, is a wall on which are the names of the children killed in the Gaza conflict in 2014. Although written in Arabic, I could identify the repetition of the different surnames. I was told some families lost 10 or more of their members. There were about 250 names on the wall, but in reality, over 500 Palestinian children were killed in this particular conflict.
There is so much pertinent information, I am providing links for further reading.
The words say “Prisoner of Childhood”. Salah explains this is a new banner recently welcoming the young man home. He was arrested at 11 years old and was detained for a year and a half in an Israeli detention center.
He is hailed as a hero and overcomer.
A mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails that began April 16, 2017 came to an end after 41 days as Israel offered a compromise deal to meet some of the strikers’ demands centering around improved visitation rights.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/27/mass-palestinian-hunger-strike-israel-ends
When I ask about the red tic marks, he explains “that was basically when it became deadly”.
This is a difficult piece for me to write, for several reasons. The obvious is that this is a horrible place to live, and innocent children struggle under its burden. While I don’t have a dog in the fight, per se, I am pro-Israel. I believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and Israel is the Promised Land. Marriage is the term used to describe the relationship between God and Israel in the Old Testament. Furthermore, God promises to bless those who bless Israel, and curse those who curse her. In the book of Zechariah, He threatens to destroy those who come against Jerusalem.
The constant military presence increases the likelihood of clashes involving camp residents, many of whom are children. Young boys learn early to resist, and get carried along in the emotionally charged atmosphere.
Bullet holes are visible on the sides and fronts of these homes in this narrow street.
Salah inserts his finger into a bullet hole in a steel door. While I’m told by an outside source that a lot of the damage is old, incurred during the first and second Intifada, but never repaired, he claims there are new holes every time he comes here- nearly every day.
The separation wall isolates Aida camp from the surrounding recreational area that was once available to residents, so children play in the narrow street.
Salah regularly visits the children in Aida, showing them affection and bringing them small gifts. They perk up when they see him coming.
I ask Salah if I’m going to be the ugly tourist if I take pictures and he says “don’t worry about it. They know what I’m doing…”
Concern on their faces, these little guys want to know who I am.
In Arabic, Salah tells them I am a friend. Instantly, they relax and break into smiles. They take turns high-fiving with Salah.
Another admirer, this curious guy comes forward, to have a closer look at the stranger with blond hair.
I walked up a short flight of stairs to have a better view of the area, continuing to take pictures with my Ipad.
When they spot me up there, the reactions of the children are marked and their demeanor changes radically.
Suddenly their joy disappeared and they began to speak rapidly to Salah in Arabic.
You can see by their body language that something is wrong. Salah tells me that they asked him if I was going to give my pictures to the soldiers. They are afraid the soldiers will come find them, and kill them while they sleep.
That just about annihilated me, and I began to cry. They then asked him why I was crying…
Without waiting for an answer, they quickly turned around and ran away. Although we walked through the entire camp, I never saw them again.
My extremely patient tour guide waits for me as I take myriad pictures. He finally walks ahead with a friend and leaves me to catch up. Salah is well-known and our conversation is continually interrupted with greetings from many young men. I see very few women.
I’m not sure what this says, but I know the middle guy is Yasser Arafat. My Arab friend, who lives in Bethlehem, told me in his own words:
“We thought Arafat was good, but he screwed us up. The Oslo Accord, that just screwed us up completely. Palestinians love people who deceive them; we love to deceive ourselves…”
“People get busy and just give up. They accept the way things are and stop trying to change it. That’s life. They have zero faith in the government.”
He is quick to point out that a lot of the suffering is the result of corruption in the government. “Everyone knows it, but you don’t dare say it.”
He calls it internal terrorism. “If you open your mouth, you’re going to get it. You become a target.”
When I asked him what could be done to change it, he said the government would have to go. But everyone fears whoever replaced Mahmoud Abbas (current president of the Palestinian National Authority) could be worse. “
With obvious pride, Salah explains these women portrayed on the wall are activists from this very camp. He points to the house where the middle woman, Amal Khlail, lived. I don’t get any detail on their “accomplishments”, but I research and fill that in later. Apparently, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
Heroines. On the right, Laila Khaled was arrested in 1970 by Israeli sky marshals while carrying two grenades in an attempt to hijack an El Al flight from Amsterdam with a partner, whom the security officers killed. British authorities released her in exchange for hostages from another hijacking a month after her arrest. She had already hijacked an American passenger plane in 1969, landing it in Damascus. Now 75, she lives in Haifa and is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
On the left: Dalal El-Mughrabi o
n March 11, 1978, with a group of 12 comrades, infiltrated the Lebanese-Israeli border using rubber dinghy boats. They hijacked an Israeli military bus , took three dozen soldiers as hostages, and engaged in a nine hour battle with Israeli forces. The group was killed in the fighting, along with a majority of the Israeli soldiers on the bus.
Please excuse my editorial license, but I couldn’t help but think how much these next two resemble the women on the wall- angry and malevolent. Anyone with me on this one?
Rashid Tlaib: “It is unfortunate that Prime Minister Netanyahu took a page out of Trump’s book,” Tlaib said. 
All I can do as the granddaughter of a woman who lived in Occupied Territory is to elevate her voice by exposing the truth the only way I know how.”
Tlaib is a fierce critic of Israel’s policies regarding Palestinians, and supports the Boycott, Diversify and Sanctions movement, which seeks an economic boycott and other penalties against the Jewish State, a key US ally.
Muftia Tlaib, the 90-year-old grandmother of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), has a 
message for Donald Trump on Saturday: “may God ruin him.”
The young man pictured above was killed about 15 years ago. He was suspected of masterminding a bombing that killed 12 people on a Jerusalem bus in November 2002.
This baby, his nephew, was born in Aida the following year and named Ala’a, after his uncle. The birthmark on his face is in the shape of his uncle’s name written in Arabic. It was quite a phenomenon, and widely publicized. As I stood there, Ala’a, now age 15, walked up to Salah and greeted him. The resemblance to his deceased uncle was uncanny. He showed me the birthmark, but declined to be photographed. The link below tells the entire story.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/02/mideast.baby/index.html
I met these fine ladies working in the grocery store. We introduced ourselves and they consented to a picture.
I was surprised at the scarcity of merchandise on display. My pictures show pretty much the entire inventory.
Outside, my guide pointed to the above graffiti, explaining that the shopkeeper supported BDS or Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Certainly, he himself had not purchased any Israeli products for more than 10 years. Basically, it’s another protest against the Israeli occupation.
Get the full story in the link below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_Sanctions
The shelves above are from a small shop outside the Aida camp, not far from where I was staying. You can see food was very plentiful in this shop, with many brands I was familiar with. Nutella, Honey Bunches of Oats and even Betty Crocker cake mixes!!
It seemed like everywhere I looked, there was crushing poverty, squalor and very bad carpentry.
Children called hello and skipped up to us. Spirited, beautiful children- unconcerned about their situation. I didn’t dare take any more pictures of them, for fear of traumatizing someone else.
Salah told me that building materials were scarce, so people would tear apart what they had, and reuse the lumber and stone.
Families tend to be large, and as they grow, there’s nowhere to go, because the footprint of the camp does not expand. He refers to these as “sardine houses”, because people sleep head to toe.
Houses are strengthened and then built up. He claims the occupants are attempting to build a virtual distance between themselves and the occupation.
Every once in a while, I’d see something colorful; someone attempting to improve on the monochromatic drabness.
Turning a corner, a graffiti-laden wall stretches all the way down the hill.
Presumably, these are all of the locations where the inhabitants of the camp hail from and hope to return to one day.
This says “If the olive trees knew who planted them…their oil would become tears”.
The artwork, done largely by children from Lajee Center, was incredibly intricate. This is an example of a permit that would be required to leave the West Bank.
The mosaic work on the wall is artistic and truly astounding.
The Lajee Center is located within the walls of Aida Camp and provides activities and cultural events for the many children residing here. They are on Facebook. Lajee Center- lots of interesting videos to check out.
Seven decades after Resolution 194, why haven’t Palestinian refugees returned home?
There are no easy answers. Certainly this “conflict “ makes The Troubles of Northern Ireland look like a schoolyard squabble…
So, what are the facts?
- 70 years ago, on December 11, 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 194.
- The Resolution defined principles for reaching a final settlement and returning Palestine refugees to their homes.
- It resolved that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours” should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date.
- Compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.
- The UN resolution was never implemented, and with time, its standing has been diminished by an international community unwilling to enforce it.
What’s been done so far?
UN Resolution 242, 1967, spoke ambiguously of “a just settlement” for refugees. The resolution is famous for the imprecision, in English, of its central phase concerning an Israeli withdrawal – it says simply “from territories”. The Israelis said this did not necessarily mean all territories, but Arab negotiators argued that it did. Furthermore, it was written under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, under which Security Council resolutions are recommendations, not under Chapter VII, which means they are orders.
Camp David Accords, 1978
US President Jimmy Carter invited Egyptian President Sadat and the Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, for talks at the presidential retreat at Camp David near Washington. The talks lasted for 12 days and resulted in two agreements.
I won’t list them here- they obviously proved worthless.
The Madrid Conference, 1991, co-sponsored by the US and the Soviet Union, was designed to follow up the Egypt-Israel treaty by encouraging other Arab countries to sign their own agreements with Israel.
Jordan, Lebanon and Syria were invited as well as Israel and Egypt. The Palestinians were also represented, but as part of a joint delegation with Jordan and not by Yasser Arafat or other leading figures in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), to whom the Israelis objected.
The Palestinian track soon gave way to secret talks that led to the Oslo agreement.
The Oslo Agreement,1993 stipulated that Israeli troops would withdraw in stages from the West Bank and Gaza, that a “Palestinian Interim Self-Governing Authority” would be set up for a five-year transitional period, leading to a permanent settlement based on resolutions 242 and 338.
The agreement spoke of putting “an end to decades of confrontation and conflict” and of each side recognising “their mutual legitimate and political rights”.
Therefore, though not stated explicitly in the text, the implication was that a state of Palestine would one day be set up alongside Israel.
Camp David Summit 2000 was a summit meeting at Camp David between United States president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat. The summit took place July 11-25, 2000. Clinton’s peace plan laid out various options for resolving the refugee issue, including repatriation to the (non-existent) Palestinian state, settlement in host countries or emigration to third countries, such as Canada or Australia. Only a token return to Israel was offered, even then conditional on its approval.
Red Sea Summit in Aqaba, 2003
The Roadmap to Peace was a plan to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict proposed by the Quartet on the Middle East: the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. The principles of the plan were first outlined by U.S. President George W. Bush in a speech on June 24, 2002, in which he called for an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in peace. The process reached a deadlock early in phase I and the plan was never implemented.
Annapolis, 2007
US President George W Bush hosted a conference at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland aimed at relaunching the peace process.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas took part in talks along with officials from the peace-making Quartet and more than a dozen Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Syria.
However the Palestinian group Hamas, which had won parliamentary elections and taken control of the Gaza Strip, was not represented. It declared it would not be bound by anything decided.
The talks came to a halt with Israel’s military offensive in Gaza in December 2008. This coincided roughly with Benjamin Netanyahu’s replacement of Olmert as prime minister, who took several months to publicly back the concept of a Palestinian state.
Washington, 2010
After taking office, US President Barack Obama attempted to restart the peace process. Contact between Israel and the Palestinians resumed in May 2009, after a hiatus of 19 months, in the form of indirect “proximity talks” through US Middle East envoy George Mitchell.
In November 2009, Mr Obama persuaded Mr Netanyahu to agree to a 10-month partial freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank. But Mr Abbas said it did not cover East Jerusalem and that he wanted a guarantee of a Palestinian state based on 1967 lines.
The Israeli and Palestinian leaders met again, at Sharm el-Sheikh, before Israel’s settlement construction freeze expired on September 26 and the talks were suspended. US negotiators subsequently failed to persuade Mr Netanyahu’s coalition government to renew the moratorium, or to convince Mr Abbas to resume negotiations without an end to all settlement activities on occupied territory.
Not to be outdone, the current US administration is working on its own “peace to prosperity” plan. Presumably, the “Opportunity of the Century” would include the creation of one million jobs, thereby reducing Palestinian poverty by half and doubling their GDP. A 25 mile travel corridor linking Gaza to the West Bank, exclusively for Palestinian use may include highway, rail, or both.
The big question is if an economic plan can outweigh the unresolved political issues of the past 70 years. The unveiling of the economic blueprint follows two years of deliberations and delays in rolling out a broader peace plan between Israelis and Palestinians.
US President Donald Trump says its alliance with Israel has never been stronger, and the Palestinians have refused to talk to the Trump administration since it recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital in late 2017. The PA is further upset over the administration’s decision to halt annual payments of $500 million in financial assistance.
US President Donald Trump said he would likely wait until after Israel’s Sept. 17 elections to release his peace plan.
From my research, it’s obvious:
- Israel and State of Palestine (or Palestine National Authority) are not even close to coming to agreement. About anything.
- Palestine is in love with being a victim and Israel is a bully. Let’s face it- it happens. I’ve seen it in the way Palestinians are treated as they come through the checkpoint on their way to work in Israel. A lot of the soldiers like to flex their muscles when they’re holding an M-16 and it breeds hatred.
- The playing field is not level, and never will be, as long as the Palestinian Authority continues to siphon off 90% of the aid coming in to the country.
- As a self-righteous victim, Palestine will continue with the guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks on Israel.
- Israel Defense Force (IDF), well-funded and outfitted, will continue to pummel their enemy, using excessive force whenever necessary.
- Until the Palestinian government begins to put its people first, improving conditions in the squalid refugee camps, and giving the people an opportunity to improve their situation, morale will continue to spiral downward and violence will increase. Does anyone else agree the word refuge (refugee), by definition, refers to a temporary condition of finding safety or asylum? People, these camps began to be formed in 1948!
- The only people getting hurt are the little guys who just want to work, have a family, and enjoy their lives. Yes, there are militants in Palestine. Yes, there are Israeli soldiers who like to posture and press their advantage. But for the most part, governments are benefiting from the struggles of these people, who are simply caught in the crossfire.
Feel free to refute, agree, ask a question, or leave a comment. Shabbat shalom!
Marie! Excellent article. I have always been curious about said palestinians. Who are they and why are they “trapped”. You make so much sense explaining the lack of leadership. Corruption. Other countries supporting that leadership but not really supporting the average person.
I grew up in New England in my teens working for Arabs displaced from their land and homes after the 6 day war. They always had plans to get rich in America so they could go back to their land? Have they gone back? No! Life in America is too easy. Did they “buy” land. They say, “Yes”! But to what end? They prosper here in the US. Do they have family in Israel? I doubt it. There are three or four generations of their family all living here. All but the oldest grandparents and uncles (if they havent died of natural causes and old age) are in the US.
So my bigger question is this: What prevents the people in the camps from getting out? No jobs, no money, no where to go? Is pride their motive to stay? One day overcoming and moving back to their homes? What homes? How many generations have lived since they lost the war that was supposed to push the Jews into the sea? Yet nothing changes for the newest generation.
I remember when Israel gave up Gaza with its million dollar homes, flourishing businesses and clean neighborhoods. Families were forced to move out so “palestinians” could resettle. Look what happened next. Destruction, filth, Israel feeding them, giving electricity, water, medicine by the truckload daily and yet rockets and fire bombs are sent into the Land in rebellion far too often. It is the plight of the husband and wife who want to raise a family but are used and abused as human shields by the lawless ones who’ve made the confluct never ending. Nothing will be good enough until they kill and destroy Jews and Israel once and for all.
I have news. Israel and her people are the apple of the Most High God’s eye! He gave His people the Land forever! Our Messiah Yeshua will step foot on the Mount of Olives and establish His rule and reign for a millenia. There can never be a two state solution.
The surrounding muslim controlled countries can open their borders to the refugees. Last i heard, they refuse.
Their solution is simple in my opinion. Peace in Jerusalem and the Land has to come in their hearts. Letting the go of the hate. Teaching the next generation to forgive. Oh, but peace for the muslim has a entirely different definition than what you and i hold dear.
There is an adversary and he knows his time is short before Yeshua returns. He will damn as many to eternal separation from G-d Most High as possible. The only answer is accepting that allah is not god and turning to the One True Elohim!
Well said Wendy! Praying for God to invade the dreams of and give visions to all the Muslims in the refugee camps! And also to the IDF on the border. Come Lord Yeshua! Save the poor and afflicted from the clutches of the enemy!
Thanks to my American readers. Calling on the Middle East for their opinion now…Leah, Roddy, Andrea, Issa???
Reading Deuteronomy in my time with the Lord and thought Chapter 2:1-12 was appropriate to this conversation. In those verses God warns the Israelites not to try to take the land HE GAVE to Esau! Just as He gave certain lands to Israel He also gave lands to Esau. In verse 9 He gave land to the Moabites. Our God loves all Peoples. It is people (read terrorist government in this case) who are inhumane to people. Individually I’m sure that is also at times true of the Jewish people. But not their government. To see how Arabs and Jews can live together I suggest the website oneforisrael.org. Yeshua brings brothers like Jacob and Esau together again. He is the only One Who will indeed bring lasting peace to the Middle East. And sooner than we think! Maranatha! Come Lord Yeshua!
Sooo complicated!