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least two lads known to us who are now in Israeli prisons for trivial misdemeanours and, worse, of a
young boy of 14 shot dead while walking near the fence at Beit El, the Israeli settlement that is only yards from the UNRWA schools at the camp.
Is it any wonder that resentment builds in the young men at the political stalemate that keeps them as
refugees nearly 62 years on. In her excellent book Married to Another Man, the writer and academic Ghada Karmi remembers a slogan from the 1960s: ‘Palestine is ours to liberate! Revolution until Victory!’ But
as she says, ‘It now sounds like a sad relic of a bygone age. Forty years of Israeli politicide has done its work on the Palestinian question as a national cause.’
One of James Joyce’s characters in Ulysses says, ‘The movements which work revolutions in the world are
born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on the hillside.’ Many of the people of Jalazone would have been peasant farmers, mainly from the Lydda area where Ben Gurion airport now stands. They fled in
1948, away from their land, and for as many as five generations this sprawling camp has been their home where unemployment is common and few are able to retain any physical attachment to the land.
What hope for Palestine? What hope for the future? This summer I listened to men and women in their
forties who have clear memories of the pre-Oslo (1993) days. All agreed things were better then. Israelis would come shopping in the West Bank towns and thousands of Palestinians worked for good wages in Israel.
This may be a simplistic understanding of what ‘better’ means, but when so many people are unemployed and fear and hatred is entrenched in both populations it is hard to see it as worse.
The family remains a refuge for most Palestinians and family life proved to be a delight for so many of
our volunteers as they were welcomed into homes and allowed to share everyday life as well as special occasions such as weddings. The French psychiatrist Cyrulnik, fascinated by the paradox of wealth, says ‘It is
not easy to have a family life in a rich country. Poverty is a barrier to many things, but it gives solidarity to family life.’ I’m not sure how far I agree with that opinion, but the warmth of family life in
Palestine can teach us a great deal and be part of that two-way process of education that Unipal seeks to foster.
The 2009 Summer Programmes
For more information about the 2009 summer programmes, please click on the links below:
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