Dheisheh Camp
مخيّم الدهيشة
Established in 1949 on a third of a square kilometre south of Bethlehem, Dheisheh gathered the survivors of as many as 79 villages from six subdistricts — Hebron, Jerusalem, Ramla, Gaza, Bir al-Sabi' and Jaffa; Zakariyya, Bayt Nattif, Ras Abu Ammar, al-Walaja and al-Qabu among them — into one of the most politically formidable camps in Palestine.
Dheisheh was established in 1949 on 0.31 square kilometres inside the boundaries of Bethlehem municipality, about three kilometres south of the city centre and twenty-three from Jerusalem, on land UNRWA leased from the Jordanian government. The site had been an Egyptian army barracks; the name is said to derive from the dense thicket, heisha in Egyptian usage, that stood on it.
Its people came from the villages of the central hills. The camp’s refugees originate in as many as seventy-nine villages across the subdistricts of Hebron, Jerusalem, Ramla, Gaza, Bir al-Sabi’ and Jaffa, but more than half descend from seven destroyed villages in the corridor between Jerusalem and the coastal plain. The largest single group, roughly 15.6 percent, comes from Zakariyya; then Bayt Itab (7.2 percent), Jarash and Bayt Nattif (6.1 percent each), Allar (5.9), Ras Abu Ammar (4.6), al-Walaja (4.5), Dayr Aban (4.3), Ajjur (3.9) and al-Qabu (3.8). Most of these villages lie within sight of the camp: their people were displaced a few kilometres, and could look back at their own hills.
Like every camp, Dheisheh moved from tents to shelters to concrete, and then upward, its alleys narrowing as families grew and the leased land did not. Under Israeli occupation after 1967 it became a byword for confrontation. Between 1967 and the camp’s transfer to Palestinian Authority jurisdiction in 1995 it was under curfew an average of three and a half days a month — once for eighty-four consecutive days. During the first intifada a six-metre barbed-wire fence was raised around it and thirteen of its fourteen entrances were barricaded, leaving a single controlled way in and out.
Dheisheh’s institutions have outlasted those closures: the Ibdaa Cultural Center and a series of youth and children’s organisations, alongside a long local tradition of documenting the villages of origin in maps, photographs and family registers. Its residents remain among the most articulate defenders of the position that camps are not neighbourhoods but temporary arrangements — that to improve them permanently would be to accept that the villages listed on the registration cards are gone for good.
Sources
Cited works
2- palquest.org — dheisheh refugee camp(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/highlight/30721/dheisheh-refugee-camp
- en.wikipedia.org — Dheisheh(opens in a new tab)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dheisheh