Ama'ri Refugee Camp

Ama'ri is one of the oldest refugee camps in Palestine. It was established in 1948 outside Ramallah, although it is now more usefully described as one of that city's inner slum areas.

To begin to appreciate Ama'ri you need to go back to 1948 when Ben Gurion's Zionist militants swept across Palestine ethnically cleansing the region of its inhabitants, establishing the State of Israel in the process.

The inhabitants of Ama'ri are originally from Lud and Ramla, which were prosperous towns located in present day Israel. Lud was destroyed and replaced with Ben Gurion Airport, Israel's only international airport. Ramla still exists, but now as an almost exclusively Jewish city. Jihad, the director of the Ama'ri Children's Club explained further.

"When we left Lud and Ramla [in 1948], it was all of a sudden. We had no idea we would be forced to leave by the Israelis… So we had nothing. We could not take our clothes, our furniture, our gold and jewelry. Nothing."

At first the families of Lud and Ramla thought they would be able to return in a matter of weeks. Instead, they remain refugees until the present, some 57 years later.

From 1948 to 1953, Ama'ri's population was forced to live in tents without basic infrastructure like a sanitation system. After 1953, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) built rudimentary dwellings, each with one bedroom and a small kitchen shared by anywhere between 5 and 9 people. Today Ama'ri houses 9000 people in an area measuring approximately 1000 square metres. Such statistics are not hard to believe when you visit the place. The narrow alleyways of Ama'ri are intensely claustrophobic. The children of Ama'ri in particular appear to find the situation frustrating because there simply isn't enough room to play and explore. The one small playground they have (pictured) is tiny. And yet it is meant to cater for thousands of children. Around 60 percent of Ama'ri's population, like most of Palestine, is under the age of 18.

During the Al Aqsa Intifada which began 2002, when Israel surrounded Ramallah, the playground and many surrounding buildings, including the belongings inside, were flattened. Where once the playground was a grassed area, it is now heaped with sand. The Ama'ri Children's Club's offices were raided and computers and furniture were also destroyed.

"[The Israelis] did this because they don't want our children to live a normal life like everyone else in the world."

Jihad believes the Club was targeted because it provides services to children, like sporting activities and drama classes, which allow them to express themselves.

"Israel wants us to be dependent on them. That is why they spread drugs and crime here [through Palestinian collaborators]. Sometimes collaborators fire at settlements to get a [military] response from the Israelis."

I could not help but wonder how much of this was true, and how much was the product of resentment towards Israel fuelled by decades of dispossession and collective punishment. Conspiracy theories are rife here, as, I read, they are in many Middle Eastern communities. One person I met even tried to convince me that Rupert Murdoch was Jewish. I tried to explain that 'Murdoch' was a very Scottish name, and that Rupert himself was from Adelaide in Australia. I am not sure how convincing my thesis was.

Be that as it may, I could not help wondering whether I too would assume the worst about Israel if, like these people, almost every experience with Israelis was negative.

Beyond that, the message was very clear, and it was very simple. When I asked people in Ama'ri what they wanted, three answers dominated.

"We want to live side-by-side with the Israelis with dignity and mutual respect, we want recognition [from Israel] that we were evicted from our homes… but so long as there is an occupation we will resist."

And what about the fact that Lud is now an airport, and Ramla is entirely Jewish?

None of the people I met at Am'ri would answer this question directly. Many expressed a strong desire to literally return to their original homes. I couldn't help wondering if this desire was actually a reflection of having been forcibly evicted for so long without so much as even recognition of this basic fact, let alone anything more concrete like compensation. Or is it merely the response of a stubborn people?

Probably both. The impacts of occupation on human nature are difficult to distil.

After the United States was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Ama'ri Children's Club donated $US10,000 to the American Consulate. Here Jihad presents the cheque to the United States Consul-General.

A monument to the 'shaheed' (martyrs) - the people killed when Israel invaded Ama'ri in 2002.