Family from Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Bethlehem. Photo courtesy of Josh Hough

His mother, unable to go to the hospital when she went into labour, gave birth to him in the tiny house that he now shares with seven other people.

His story is not unusual.

Dheisheh is one of three Palestinian refugee camps in Bethlehem.  It was established in 1949, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced as a result of the Arab-Israeli war.  Muosa’s grandparents arrived there after fleeing the village of Al-Qabu, 12 kilometres west of Jerusalem in what is now Israel.

“We are here living in Dheisheh, but Dheisheh, it is not our land,” he says.  “My land is over there in Al-Qabu.”

Dheisheh currently houses nearly 13,000 refugees in an area of about 1.5 square kilometres. 

Overcrowded cinderblock houses sit nearly on top of each other, divided by streets so narrow it is impossible to drive a car through many of them.  It is one of the oldest refugee camps in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated areas on earth.

In 1949, the United Nations created the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, a temporary agency responsible for humanitarian relief programs in the Palestinian camp.  As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wore on, UNRWA’s mandate was repeatedly renewed to help the growing number of refugees.  UNRWA considers Palestinian refugees to be “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict,” as well as their descendents.

While the 4.4 million Palestinian refugees across the globe represent by far the largest and longest-running refugee situation on the planet, more than 50 per cent of the other 9.9 million refugees worldwide are considered to be in a protracted refugee situation.  The UN uses a rough measure of 25,000 people from a particular group or area in exile for five years to identify a situation as being protracted.

As conflict wears on and refugees are unable to return home, the crude, temporary tent-cities where they wait become increasingly inadequate.  At some point, a decision has to be made to build more sturdy homes, and to invest in more sustainable infrastructure.

In the politically charged Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these decisions can’t be made lightly.

“UNRWA is caught in the unusual position of doing its best to improve the standard of living in the camps through work that is infrastructure related,” says Sahir Lone, a senior liason at UNRWA’s New York office.  “UNRWA has to pursue this work with a great deal of caution, because we do not want to be perceived to be contributing to resettlement of the refugees.  Our mandate is to improve the lives and prospects of the refugees.”

Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem. Photo courtesy of Ben Winograd

This conflict is evident at Dheisheh, where the refugees live in a strange state of limbo.  The right of return for Palestinian refugees is a contentious topic and one of the largest obstacles to a peace settlement.  Refugees at Dheisheh don’t know if they will ever be allowed to return to their home villages, even if a peace deal could be reached.

Camps span generations

Many of them, like Muosa’s parents, will spend their entire lives at the camp.  Through UNRWA’s extensive education system, they can become among the most highly educated people in the Middle East.  In the last decade, several of the schools and community centers have been wired for Internet access as part of a digital literacy program.  At Dheisheh’s cultural center, Ibdaa’, children have the opportunity to participate in recreational and cultural activities like the dance troupe, which travels as far as the United States and Sweden to perform traditional Palestinian dances.

But even for those who were born in Dheisheh, they will not feel like they are home.

Shadi Alzaghari, 28, was born in Dheisheh, where he lived until 2001 when he left for a work-exchange program in Norway.  With tensions high in 2002 and borders into the Palestinian territories closed, he was barred from returning to live in Dheisheh.  He has since obtained Norwegian citizenship.

Like Muosa, Alzaghari’s grandparents came to the camp in 1949, fleeing the village of Jarash, about 20 kilometres west of Jersualem.

“I think we are dreaming all the time to go back to our original village,” he says.  “To me, to live in a camp is not a very good life.  You think we have everything in Dheisheh, but everything in a camp means nothing in a city like Oslo.”

In 2003, the UN released a report on protracted refugee situations that noted , “If it is true that camps save lives in the emergency phase, it is also true that, as the years go by, they progressively waste these same lives.”

The report highlights the fact that refugees are often denied freedom of movement and employment in the host countries, preventing them from becoming productive members of society and perpetuating poverty inside the camps.

In a short-term camp, where a solution might seem inevitable and returning home possible, these restrictions would be simply inconvenient.  In Dheisheh, they dictate almost every aspect of someone’s life.

At 16, Muosa knows the importance of being able to work, not just for himself, but also for every member of his family.

“I am in tenth grade but after school I have to work to help my family to keep alive, and on Sundays and Fridays too, because life here is so hard,” he says.  “And my brother is in the last year of high school and he must study, so he can’t work.  So I have to work hard to keep money for his studies.”

While jobs in the West Bank and Gaza are hard to come by, UNRWA has implemented programs designed to create employment opportunities for the camp’s residents.  Nearly all of UNRWA’s labour force is made up of Palestinian refugees, and in 1991 the agency began a microfinance program to help Palestinian entrepreneurs.  It is now the largest source of microfinance for Palestinians in the West bank in Gaza, having issued over $100 million in loans to date.

“Every camp has its own economy and there is a small retail sector,” says Lone. “Those are important local engines of economic activity and support.  They provide for in-camp employment and they help boost incomes at the local level.”

Muosa knows that he is lucky compared to many of the other kids in the camp.  As a member of the Ibdaa’ dance troupe as well as the Palestinian junior soccer team, he has been able to travel to Europe, the United States and other parts of the Middle East.  Many of his friends have never even left Bethlehem.

But international travel is somewhat of a joke to him.

“I can visit the USA,” he laughs, “but I can’t visit Jerusalem.”

Restricted freedom

Since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza must obtain special permission to visit Jerusalem, just 10 kilometres northeast of Dheisheh.  While they don’t require permission to travel outside of Dheisheh, the camp’s residents need to pass through at least three checkpoints set up by the Israeli army just to leave Bethlehem.

“First they take my ID, and they see I am from Dheisheh,” Muosa says.  “Then, they might tell me I can’t go, or they might kick me, or they ask me a lot of questions and let me pass.”

Algazhari points out that to get from Bethlehem from to Ramallah, Palestinians have to go around Jerusalem instead of through it, taking more time and passing through more checkpoints.

Forced to stay in Norway, he can only hope that he will be allowed to return to the West Bank one day.

Security around Dheisheh is high because of the camp’s involvement in the first and second intifadas, or uprisings against the Israeli state.  The main road from Hebron to Jerusalem passes in front of the camp, and residents would often throw stones at Israeli vehicles driving past.

In 1987, Israeli authorities built a barbed-wire fence around the camp, cutting off all except one entrance, which was equipped with a metal turnstile gate.  In 1995, camp residents tore the fence down, leaving only the gate as a reminder of the Israeli occupation.

With the second intifada still ongoing, Dheisheh residents are used to curfews and military incursions that disrupt school days and destroy homes.  Each time a home has to be rebuilt, the refugees are conscious of the fact that it may just be destroyed again.

Muosa says his family is hopeful there will be peace and his family will be able to return to Al-Qabu.  But he knows that the definition of peace is different on both sides.

“I’ve met Israelis, but they don’t know anything about us.  We say, ‘We have a war,’ and they say, ‘Oh sorry, we feel for you.’  Once I met a girl and she said that we need peace.  I asked her what peace meant to her but she didn’t know.  I said it means that I must go back to my lands, and I must go and pray in Jerusalem, and, and, and so on.”