Clashes between Palestinian rioters and the security forces continued yesterday in the Shuafat camp in Jerusalem, and following it in many other Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.
“We want to return the situation in the camp to the way it was before Shabbat,” said Adv. Each vehicle is carefully inspected, and leaving the camp requires five hours. It is impossible to lead a life like this, and it goes against the decisions of the High Court of Justice that were made in the past. Bus drivers in the camp cannot go out to work around Jerusalem, people who need to receive medical treatment in a hospital in Jerusalem wait for hours at the checkpoint. A woman from the Bakri family almost died because of a delay at the checkpoint.”
Ignoring the unrestrained violence in the protests in Shuafat and other Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem, and of course suppressing the fatal shooting of the Noa Lazar fighter, the committee announced the continuation of the “general strike, civil disobedience and peaceful confrontations”, and this, as mentioned, in protest of the activities of the security forces in the neighborhood. The merchants in Shuafat, the committee determined, will only open grocery stores, bakeries, pharmacies and food stores. “The strike will continue in the neighborhood schools,” said the representative of the committee, and called on all parents’ committees in Arab Jerusalem to also strike the schools, “for the sake of our freedom and the freedom of our children.”
The committee announced that the workers leaving the camp would also be prohibited from working – an announcement that some residents, angry at the damage to their livelihood, condemned: “We are hungry, we need money, our families are hungry”, some of them shouted when the workers’ shutdown was announced.
The Family Committee called on the Palestinians “in the homeland districts” to support the struggle of the Shuafat people, and “to put pressure on the occupation government to put an end to the oppression of their people in the city of Jerusalem in general and in the Shuafat and Anata camps in particular. We approve the continuation of the silent strike despite the attempts of the occupation police to provoke the protesters and drag them into a circle The violence is to break the strike and tarnish their image in front of the media.”
In Shuafat, as mentioned, they want to drag all the Arabs of East Jerusalem, as well as the Arabs of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, to protest against the security forces’ hunt for the terrorist. “If they don’t release the curfew on the Shoafat camp, there will be an intifada,” threatened a resident of the eastern city who asked to remain anonymous in a conversation with us. “The situation is explosive, the young people are not afraid of being arrested and feel the need to be part of the struggle.”
Diba, who maintains an office in Shuafat, provides counseling to families in the camp located in northeast Jerusalem, between the Arab neighborhood of Ras-Khamis in the west, the Jewish neighborhood of Pisgat-Zev in the north, the Arab neighborhood of Dehiyat al-Salam in the east, and the Jewish French Hill neighborhood in the south. This is the only Palestinian camp located within the sovereign domain of the State of Israel, and it is located in the municipal territory of Jerusalem. The camp is characterized by illegal construction and stubborn demographic growth, and in the absence of governance, drug crime and serious violence developed there.
According to the residents, the lack of governance is also reflected in the weapons in the streets. “The police do not collect the weapons and do not deal with the crime as long as it does not concern them. People in the camp can be murdered and the authorities will do nothing,” says Attorney Diba. “After the separation fence was erected, leaving the camp behind, I represented the residents at the High Court in 2006. There was a promise from the Ministry of Defense that the rights of the citizens in the camp would not be violated. They promised to build a crossing with five entrances and exits that would allow the passage of 5,000 residents per hour. Despite the decision, there are only three crossings: one for buses, one for outgoing vehicles, and one for incoming vehicles. On Fridays and Saturdays They close all the crossings except one. People are tired of the humiliation, they want to live a normal life and feel that they live without rights.”
Diva, who does not refer to the riots as support for a terrorist, says that it is impossible for the camp’s residents to suffer because of the terrorist who escaped to the camp. “We heard that they found the traces of the terrorist in Nabi-Musa,” he claims. “I was exposed to many indictments of young people who carried out terrorist attacks. In a certain sense, one can understand the rage that leads them to choose the path of terrorism. Anyone who stands at a checkpoint every day and suffers harassment and an unreasonable life will think of terrorism. If the situation does not change, the tensions will continue and may even escalate.”