So nice when the New York Times gets it right. Public space like the plaza in Al Fawwar is mostly unheard-of in Palestinian camps across the West Bank. Architectural upgrades raise fundamental questions about the Palestinian identity, implying permanence, which refugees here have opposed for generations. The lack of normal amenities, like squares and parks in the camps, commonplace in Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank, was originally by design: Camps were conceived as temporary quarters. The absence of public space was then preserved over the years to fortify residents’ self-identification as refugees, displaced and stateless. ... The square has given children in the camp a place to play other than in crowded streets. Families have begun to use the space as a gathering spot. Young couples are getting married in the square. Mothers who rarely felt free to leave their homes to socialize in public now meet there twice a week to talk, study a little English and weave, selling what they make at a market that they occasionally open in the square, an enterprise that one of the mothers told me “gives us self-esteem and a sense of worth, like the men have.” The square has altered the sense of being vested in the camp — a change, partly generational, that challenges core ideas among refugees about keeping Al Fawwar a way station and temporary shelter. ... “I don’t deny the feeling of home,” Ahmad Abu al-Khiran, head of the Popular Committee that runs a refugee camp nearby called Al Aroub, said recently. Mr. Khiran oversaw the construction of Al Aroub’s own public space, a new soccer field with stone bleachers, perched on a hill. It has become a hub for young people and a place where refugees stroll and exercise. “I feel at home in Aroub,” he said. “I want the right of return so I can decide for myself if I want to live here. It’s a matter of freedom, choosing where you live.” That is a provocative concept in the camps — questioning an age-old strategy of dignified self-deprivation, reframing the right of return for Palestinians as something other than simply waiting to reclaim ancestral land. Mohammad Abo Sroor, a young man who grew up in Dheisheh, a camp near Bethlehem, participates in Campus in Camps, a new university devoted to investigating the life of refugees and the design of camps. He told me he had the key to the farm near Jaffa that his grandfather lost in 1948. But for him, as well, the right of return does not necessarily mean moving into that farm. It means “the right to live where I wish,” he said, which could include Dheisheh. via Alex Shams nytimes/2014/09/07/world/middleeast/refugees-reshape-their-camp-at-the-risk-of-feeling-at-home.html?ref=world&_r=2#
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 20:35:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015