3. Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem.

3).  Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem.

On the second day, we went to Aida refugee camp, just north of the centre of Bethlehem, the home of some 6,000 refugees, the ancestors of some of the 800,000 Palestinians - 70% of the whole Arab Palestine population - whose homes and villages, some 534 of them, were destroyed in 1948.  About 80% of these villages  remain empty, which adds to the bitterness of the refugees’ inter-generational campaign for their right to return to them.  The camp is entered under an arch on which is laid a huge replica key, symbolising this aspiration of its inhabitants to return to their ancestral homes.  Alongside the camp is a winding and particularly obtrusive section of the Separation wall, made of huge concrete slabs and watchtowers, one of which near the camp entrance, seemed to have been blackened by fire.  Nearby is a large poster depicting Aboud Shadi, an unarmed thirteen year old shot a few years ago from one of the towers by a sniper whilst he was standing with his friends.

We started in the Alrowwad Cultural and Arts Centre, with a presentation by Abdelfattah Abusrour, the director there.  The Centre started as a means of providing theatre and arts resources to the refugees in the camp, but now is the centre of a network providing these across the West Bank, promoting what he calls ‘beautiful resistance’ to the Zionist occupation and the denial of the right of return.  Abusrour spoke of how painful it is to hear children as young as 8 years old expressing the wish to die, as a despairing response to their lives in the camp, with the constant fear of being taken away in the night-time, as happens to many of their friends.  He promotes collective performance as an act of resistance, a treatment to ward off that despair and to instil hope and resilience.  He himself seemed to me to embody this beauty of resistance, being so articulate and charismatic.  He said that all forms of resistance are to be cherished and supported, including violent resistance, and that for Palestinians in the West Bank just engaging in everyday life and relationships is resistance; each form perhaps has its place and its time, but for him resistance that is expressive and collective - using theatre, music, dance, or poetry is the most beautiful.

The camp itself had a narrow and irregularly-shaped main street, with alleyways full of right-angle turns on either side.  We went into a new building made by the Arts Centre, where there was to be a guest-house, but the air-conditioning though installed cannot be used for lack of electricity; there were studios and workshops.  From the roof you could see the rooftops of the camp, each with an array of black or white water tanks.  Wherever we went in the West Bank, all the Arab towns and villages had buildings topped with these tanks, which are used to try to prevent families from running out of water, as the supply during much of the year is very intermittent.  All the Israeli settlements we saw did not have these tanks, but we saw many sites of water wells for the settlements, pumping water freely - apparently that there is no restriction at all on their water use and many have swimming pools.