When we visited the Yafa cultural centre Mahmud, the Manager, welcomed us with some other visitors and volunteers of the centre. His years of experience in the cultural resistance front have been dramatic. (The Cultural Centre as explained earlier provided workshops for children of the refugee camp of Balata) Mahmud gave a talk and an introduction about the conditions of the refugee camp, linking the refugee conditions to the entire situation of Palestine. 25,000 Palestinians live in Balata refugee camp in a tiny area of 1 km2, of whom originally 5000 had come from Jaffa. Making the Balata refugee camp one of the largest refugee camps in the West Bank. As a result of the 1948 “Nakba”, the camp was created and became prominent for its political activism during this period as well as during the two intifadas, which cost more than 230 lives, thousands injured and hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned from this refugee camp. Nowadays the political situation within Palestine has become calmer, although Palestinians are now suffering a slow death as more land is annexed by settlements funded by the Israeli state. The refugee camp conditions are disastrous, unemployment rate has risen to 40%, and due to the lack of space the camp suffers from health related problems, disallowance from privacy, and an increase in domestic violence. Furthermore, prisoners, mainly male, have furthered the social hardships of entire families.
Workers from the zone and from the cultural centre showed us the narrow footpaths of the refugee camp, the social hardships of families of Palestinians and the problems arising from the unstructured constructions of buildings. Balata refugee camp has been one of the harshest refugee camps I’ve seen in the West Bank so far depending heavily on international organisations as well as the UNRWA.
As Mahmud explained all this details to us, it was clear that the levels of hope and esperanza had run out and that many of the statements made by Palestinians for peace and acceptance had fallen into the empty ears of the international community. Mahmud’s rage climbed mountains, representing what many Palestinians feel stating that “Things are going to get worse for the Palestinians, we are sick and tired of the lack of accountability of Israel and the lack of responsibility of the international community. We are humans, we recognise the state of Israel, we want to establish a resolution for the development of a two-state solution, we want to establish a base and a state for the Palestinian people”