2023-11-01 17:31:46
BarcelonaThe refugee camp of Jabalia, in the north of the Gaza Strip, very close to the fence that separates the Palestinian territory from Israel, has suffered two attacks by the Israeli air force in the last 48 hours. The first took place at noon on Tuesday, with six depth charges of one ton each: it left a large crater in block 6, in the center of the camp, an area of homes that were leveled. The provisional balance is 50 dead and 150 wounded, according to the Ministry of Health, managed by Hamas. This Wednesday morning there was another bombing in the countryside, and for now there is no casualty estimate. This second attack took place between 1 and 1.5 kilometers from the Indonesian hospital, which treated many wounded.
Before October 7, more than 100,000 people lived there, in an area of less than 1.4 square kilometers: it is one of the largest refugee centers in Palestine and one of the most densely populated places in the world. It is impossible to know how many people were still living in the camp at the time of the attack, but many families had rejected the Israeli army’s order to evacuate the northern Strip. They feared they would never be able to return home or simply didn’t leave because they had nowhere to go. Many people had moved to the south of the Strip, to the homes of relatives, at the beginning of the war, but had decided to return because there was no safe place to shelter from the bombings.
The camp is a large neighborhood of buildings crowded together, with very narrow alleys, where the houses have grown taller over the years to accommodate the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the refugees of 1948: the camp went built then to accommodate 35,000 Palestinian refugees displaced from the south of historic Palestine, when the State of Israel was created. Inside there are about forty UN schools, an outpatient clinic and a women’s promotion center.
Before the war the streets were full of people, especially children who, when they weren’t at school, looked for an open space outside the houses, which were very small: the only time for recreation was to go to the beach, a few kilometers from wild boar Usually people didn’t leave the countryside unless it was to go to the doctor or to work, and they made their living in these streets, shopping in the small grocery stores.
Unemployment was – and will be even more so now – a massive and chronic problem since Israel imposed the blockade on the Strip in 2006. A large part of the population depended on food and financial aid from the UN. Water is one of the other major problems it faces, because 90% of the supply was unfit for consumption due to salinization and pollution due to a lack of sanitation and waste management infrastructure. Because of its proximity to the Eretz border crossing, many men from the countryside worked in Israel, although the number of work permits had also plummeted since the Second Intifada in 2001. Others survive in small workshops car or motorcycle repair, or scrap metal recovery.
The stone revolt of 1987
The camp is well known to Palestinians, not only for its size and living conditions, but also for its history. The First Intifada, the popular uprising against the Israeli occupation, broke out after an Israeli military truck rammed a vehicle carrying Palestinian workers on December 8, 1987. Four people died there.
It is not the first time that the camp has been the target of Israeli attacks: in 2002 a missile launched from a helicopter destroyed a metallurgical workshop. Subsequently, there were several military incursions (in 2004, 24 minors were shot dead by Israeli soldiers inside the camp) until IDF troops left the Strip in 2005.
Then came the four wars in Gaza. The camp was also bombed, including the Al-Fakhura school: at least 30 people were killed there. The Israeli government said they had responded to gunfire from inside, but a UN investigation denied there were fighters or any hidden arsenal.
In the 2014 war the Israeli army attacked another United Nations school inside the camp with artillery. On that occasion, 15 people who had taken refuge there died. A spokesman for the international body said they had notified Israeli authorities on 17 occasions of the location of the school and that there were civilians inside. The UN statement was forceful: “Yesterday, babies were killed while sleeping with their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN shelter in Gaza: this is a cause of universal shame.” Now, nine years after those events, Jabalia has once again become a favorite target of the Hebrew army.
#Jabalia #refugee #camp