Untitled Document

A Snapshot of the Camp

Jihad Abu Zneid

Shuafat Refugee Camp, where Palestinian Legislative Council member Jihad Abu Zneid was born, was the last camp created in the occupied territories and the only refugee camp in Jerusalem. Its original 50 acres have doubled since 1966, while the original population of 1500 multiplied more than ten-fold, 20,000. Shuafat Camp – bordered on one side by the Palestinian neighborhood of Shuafat, on two sides by the Israeli settlements of Pisgat Ze’ev & French Hill, and on its last by the planned expansion of Ma’ale Adumim – is run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), though almost half of its residents are non-refugees who have come from other parts of the West Bank to work in Jerusalem.

Most of the streets in the camp are unpaved. There are no sidewalks, no sanitation services, no playgrounds. Many children go to school outside the camp, in other East Jerusalem neighborhoods. Almost everyone in Shuafat RC carries a Jerusalem identity card and pays taxes to Israel. The camp has been dubbed “Chicago” by residents, because of the drug trafficking and organized crime that beset it.

THE NEEDS ARE GREAT

Students in parenting class

Although Jihad Abu Zneid is nursing a sore throat and should be in bed, she takes us on a tour of the camp and the Women’s Center, an independent Palestinian NGO whose mandate is to address the social, economic, cultural, and educational needs of the camp’s women and children. The organization was founded in 1997 as part of a Community Development Center built by the German government and managed by an elected Administrative Committee of nine.

As head of this Administrative Committee, Abu Zneid oversees a nursery school and kindergarten, library, literacy program, fitness and diet education, vocational training (beautician, sewing, and computers), leadership development for young women, and a children’s summer camp. Jihad says that the Community Center is the only place in the camp where women’s customs and traditions are recognized, and the only place where women’s participation can be activated and developed. She is clearly passionate about her work and determined to “enhance the culture of equality, ensure the rights of women, and build a new generation of young female leaders” in Shuafat and among all Palestinians.

Garbage in Shuafat Camp

She shows us the early stages of construction of a fitness center – including a planned swimming pool – and takes us to see the kindergarten, nursery school and a parenting class. Abu Zneid helped to establish the Women’s Center and is fiercely committed to it; as a Fatah representative on the PLC, she also sits on the Legislative Council’s Jerusalem, Prisoners, and Refugees c ommittees.

She tells us about a recent survey of women and their priorities for the camp: addressing the issue of family violence ; vocational training and employment; better education for their children; and health care. She tells us about the hopelessness inside the camp, and the fear.

SHUAFAT AND THE WALL

Children in Kindergarten

In part, the fear comes from living daily in a refugee camp and under occupation. In part, the fear comes from what the future will bring. The Security Barrier – a high concrete wall to the south, temporary metal fences to the north – has already separated Shuafat Refugee Camp (along with half the village of Anata) from the rest of Jerusalem. Residents must already show their Jerusalem ID cards to get in and out of the camp through a military checkpoint – even schoolchildren must prove they live in Shuafat on their way home from school. People worry that their IDs will be confiscated and that work will become impossible. Although the plans for fencing in Shuafat are being contested in court, some residents have already begun to rent housing in East Jerusalem in anticipation.