Beiteba Refugee Camp, Nablus

Back in Nablus today. I spent most of the afternoon meeting the head of the Women's Centre at Nablus' Beiteiba Refugee Camp. The Women Centre includes a hostel and educational facilities for Beiteba's young female population. It's Director (pictured sitting down to the right above) is one of the most influential women in Palestine. Having met several respected, male community leaders, it was refreshing to finally meet a senior, female Palestinian figure. Given that, you can imagine my eagerness to speak to her about the Occupation and life in general for Palestinian women. Instead I was forced to hear about her personal experience with the Al Naqba (Arabic for 'the catastrophe') of 1948, when Palestinians throughout the region now known as Israel were driven out of their homes, often on the promise that the eviction was temporary.

And what began, in me, as a sense of frustration - yet again, a Palestinian would not give me a sound bite, but would instead wax intensely about some decades-old injustice - ended, I think, with a slow realisation that this very old injustice was still fresh, still relevant, as though it only occurred last week. Many Palestinians, like her grandparents, still keep the old keys that unlock the doors to the houses they left some 56 years ago.

Just after 1967* her family visited their old house in Israel. It was still standing, and was now inhabited by a Hungarian family.

"My father knocked on the door... A lady opened the door and asked him who he was. He told her that this used to be his house, and she just stared at him strangely. Can you imagine how it feels to be treated like a stranger in your own home? We had to ask her if we could come inside and see our house. The lady let us in, but she didn't want to know [about their eviction], she just said that the house was given to her family by the [Israeli] Government... the house was vacant [when it was given to the Hungarian family]."
Little has changed on that front for Palestinians today. The Beiteba Community is often targeted by the Israelis, whose mountain top bases peer directly down into the camp's narrow 'streets'. The Director of the Women's Centre gave me a tour of the camp. Like Ama'ri, the atmosphere was claustrophobic, the conditions basic albeit spotlessly clean.

Despite this, the people of Beiteba continue to try and live normal lives. I was given a tour of the new Women's Centre, still under construction, which was an impressive, four-storey complex designed specifically to give women a space to live and express themselves. Perhaps here is a chance for a new start.

The young man in the picture below, a resident of Beiteba Refugee Camp, died in a suicide attack in Israel.
In response, the Israeli army bulldozed his family home (below). The top of the mountain which overlooks the ruins is an Israeli military installation. How does this prevent further suicide attacks? How is this a security measure? Collective punishment is a war crime under international law.

"Palestinian women are fighting many battles... at home, to take care of their families, [and] we are still resisting the Israelis." The Director showed me this Hamas poster as she spoke, pointing out the woman holding a rifle in the bottom left corner. It seems that a society under military occupation cannot but be militant.

* In 1967 Israel had a decisive military victory against its Arab-state neighbours, occupying East Jerusalem, the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip.