Gaza - Deir El Beilah Refugee Camp

Tue. June 2, 2009

Deir El Beilah Refugee Camp Community Clinic, funded by the UNRWA serves 60,000 people. There is a Women’s Centre in the Clinic. This is a traditional male-dominated society and the high unemployment resulting from the attacks and blockade has caused marital disruption and family stress. The Centre provides a refuge. It deals with issues of spouse abuse, PTSD, election awareness, craft and job training, counseling in birth control and abortion. There are English  classes and a women’s poetry circle, that meets to read their own poetry to each other. But the Centre lacks materials excluded by the blockade. There is a computer lab with no power and a gym with no equipment.

Poetry Circile 

At a community rehab center extensive programs are available for nominal fee – physical therapy, sign language, drama therapy. There is a radio station. Brooklyn delegate Ted Auerbach is interviewed on the air. In the basement is a bakery where 300 rolls a day are baked for the community.

 Computer class during blackout  

Approximately 65% of the Gazan population are refugees (or their descendants or families). The camps are named for the areas of Palestine from which they were driven.. Residence is, however, not limited to the camps. Camp housing is free but the residents do not own their houses.

We ride the buses to the village of Joheh el Deak, in mid-Gaza on the Eastern border. It was attacked and occupied by the IDF on Jan.4, 2009. The village was used as an IDF base. After 17 days, just before the IDF pulled out, the entire village of 320 buildings was leveled by shell, dynamite and bulldozer. Two persons were killed. 1000 were displaced. The school and community center were shelled. Crops, wells and trees were destroyed. The residences were not mud huts, but reinforced concrete structures, some two and three stories housing extended families. The larger houses were dynamited, the smaller ones bulldozed. All were demolished except for five houses where the IDF lived during the demolition..

Joheh el Deak

These are original Gazan Bedouins, not refugees. They are not eligible for UN aid, yet they get a few tents. Otherwise they improvise dwellings with sheets of corrugated metal, carpets and blankets. They live in the rubble of their former homes. There are no materials available for reconstruction. The government (Hamas) provides food and a few necessities. The mayor conducts the tour. He asks why? Why destroy their homes , their livelihood, their wells, their beloved trees? But he says they will never leave this place. They will never give up. The Palestinian flag flies from the tallest pile of rubble and from the roof of their shell pocked school


In the district called Tel El Hawa we see what is left of the Ministry of Education and Justice after the IDF tanks got through with it.

The children of the village and their School.

People are so happy to see us. They feel they are alone in the world, that no one cares, that they are disposable. The UNRWA under John Ging does all it can. It is the lifeline for two-thirds of the population of Gaza. Yet it is limited to refugee assistance by its Charter. And it is regularly attacked in the U.S. Congress as anti-Israel

We meet with the Deputy Minister of Prisoners and with the families of some of the 11,700 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israel. They hold pictures of their imprisoned fathers, brothers, sons. husbands, wives, sisters, daughters. They tell their stories:

• A mother hasn’t seen her son in seven years because she is considered a terrorist. She is old, bent and walks with a cane.
• A wife hasn’t been allowed to see her husband in five years.  
• A son, 21, has never seen his father who was arrested when the son was 14 days old.
• A mother whose imprisoned son has cancer. They only give him pain pills, no treatment. She has been forbidden to see him for nine years.
• A father whose son was sentenced to 100 years, hasn’t seen the son for four years.

 There are stories of female prisoners forced to give birth in handcuffs, male prisoners beaten and tortured. They speak with anger, passion and defiance. But they all thank us profusely for coming and ask us to tell their stories to our politicians. Barbara goes to each one of them, takes their hands and tries to reassure them that we will tell their stories. They all thank and bless her.

Prisoners and their Relatives

That evening we meet with International Solidarity Movement cadre. They show videos of Israeli harassment of fishermen and farmers. Israel originally agreed to a six mile limit on fishing but have shortened it to three miles making it almost impossible for the fishermen to make a living. Now they attack the fishing boats anywhere, sometimes just one hundred meters from shore, and even once on the beach.

We see videos showing fishing boats, mostly twenty foot outboards with just a canopy on them, as they approach the three mile limit. High speed IDF gunboats close in, trying to swamp them with their wake, training water cannon on them or firing 50 caliber machineguns at their net cables. Sometimes they abduct the fishermen and confiscate the boat. It happens everyday. ISM cadre, wearing identifying vests have it all on video, despite getting knocked around a lot. The fishermen keep going out because they have to. Some of our group who were housed near the beach heard the gunfire near dawn on several occasions. .

Farmers, whose land is near the border, while tending their fields, are regularly fired upon by Israeli border guards. The “green zone” (no-go) was originally set by the IDF at 100 meters. They raised it to one mile cutting off many farmers from their land and pre-empting cultivation of about 30% of arable land in Gaza. Again, ISM cadre, with clearly marked observer vests, went into the fields with the farmers. They carried video cameras and megaphones. They announced their presence. The IDF opened fire anyway. In one recorded episode, a farmer was hit in the leg. Recently three farmers were killed in their own fields.

Around 10pm, a group of us meet with Omar, a Palestinian businessman and intellectual and clearly not of Hamas. My guess is he was active with Fatah until the Oslo Accords.
He relates a history of the conflict in Gaza, where he remained, while Arafat and his Fatah entourage went into exile in Tunisia and elsewhere. After Oslo, the PLO leadership (referred to by those who remained as “the Tourists”) returned to Gaza and the West Bank announcing they had “recognized Israel” and embraced non-violence. But they essentially had nothing to offer Palestinians except vague promises by the Israelis to engage in peace talks. The settlements in the West Bank continued to expand, as did the web of highways, barred to Palestinians, connecting them.. The Palestinian putative state was entirely dependent on Israeli whim regarding access to water, electricity, travel, security, and employment. Hundreds of checkpoints, at which thousands of Palestinians were arbitrarily denied passage or delayed for hours, suffocated life in the compressed enclaves of Palestinian towns.

Omar indicates Palestinian employment, per capita income and GNP went down. In the meantime, large villas for Arafat favorites went up. Vast sums from the U.S. and the E.U. lined Fatah pockets. Arafat had forsworn armed struggle, recognized Israel and accepted apartheid in order to retain his power and patronage. Omar speaks of the Fatah “breakdown of civil society,” i.e. how the corrupt bribe-and-kickback based Fatah/ PLO eroded the community service based system of Palestinian culture.

Hamas, in contrast, gained credibility because of their community services and the fact that they fight the IDF. They are very local and parochial in their outlook but are learning. He says the leadership could all use six weeks in New York.