Open Space in the Palestinian Refugee Camps

During our class, we discussed the New York Times’ article about a Palestinian refugee camp and how Palestinian refugees are reshaping their camps. I have read the article several times in order to understand what the journalist intended to introduce. I agree that certain spaces in the Palestinian refugee camps are “gendered spaces,” where these spaces are dominated by men.

However, what I found was that the journalist unsuccessfully introduced the concept of “open space” in the Palestinian refugee camps. The political and socio-cultural context that contributed to make Palestinian refugee camps as “open space” and at the same time “closed and suffocated spaces” remained unexplained by the journalist. What I argue here is that there is no “public space” and no “private space” in the Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank. My argument is based on the historical background of establishing Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syrian and Lebanon. The refugee camps were established after the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) in 1948, by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). The UNRWA rented small pieces of lands in different spaces and established the refugee camps. Therefore, the land where the refugee camps are now located is privately owned by other people, mainly they are from villages next to the refugee camps, or by residents of cities in the Palestinian territories, in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. This forms that houses of Palestinian refugees in their refugee camps are not their own, and the whole refugee camps are not public. Similarly, refugee camps cannot be private spaces. Meanwhile, the owners of these lands do not intervene in regulating the camps or collecting the rents from Palestinian refugees, since the UNRWA is the main responsible for Palestinian refugees.

Ironically, these pieces of lands were rented for 99 years, since there was no political solution in the horizon after the War of 1948. Refugee camps began as tents, where each family received a tent from the UNRWA. Hence, one may argue that the tents formed a private space for families to live in, and to meet their essential needs. These tents were “open” and could have never been a “private” or privately owned property. Bathrooms were also “public,” because the sewage systems, electricity, and water were provided to the camps in the 1970s. In the 1960s, the tents were replaced by small rooms by the UNRWA, and each family received a room instead of the tents. After the increase in the number of population, people expanded the rooms, and added more floors, and since the space of the camp is limited with one or two square kilometer, the expansion was vertical, not horizontal. For example, the Balata Refugee Camp is one of the largest refugee camp in population and the smallest in space in the West Bank. Recent statistics revealed that more than 30,000 people are living on an area of one square kilometer. Therefore, the space can never be a “private.” People cannot have their own privacy within one square kilometer, with more than 30,000 people sharing the same space/place. That is what I introduce it as “open” space, but “suffocated space” at the same time, because there is no sunshine, no light, no fresh air, electricity cut, water shortage, and overcrowded spaces/places.

Therefore, providing this historical background about the architecture of the camp, and why the refugee camps look like this today were absent from the New York Times’ article. It is not about Palestinian refugees wanted to shape their refugee camps to show their sufferings and to express the refugee camps as “temporary spaces.” It is the space that was given to Palestinian refugees to temporarily stay in it, shaped the refugee camps. In addition, the Israeli state by refusing to implement the UN Resolution 194 about the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homelands, the hegemonic status-quo, and other factors played a major in prolonging the suffering of Palestinian refugees.