[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE
LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS
(and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE
& PEACE... and hopefully Palestine (& America)]
 |
| A newly constructed concrete tent in the Duheisha refugee camp south of Bethlehem in the West Bank. (MaanImages/Alex Shams) |
By: Alex Shams
BETHLEHEM
(Ma'an) -- Bethlehem’s Duheisha refugee camp on Friday officially
became home to a new community center housed in an unexpected but albeit
quite familiar structure for local residents: a refugee tent
constructed entirely out of concrete and mesh.
The concrete
tent is located in the Edward Said Garden of the al-Feniq cultural
center near the camp, and has been dubbed by its creators as a
“gathering space for communal learning.”
The design pays
homage to the history of camp’s 15,000 residents by recalling their
ancestors’ struggle after they were forced to flee their homes in
villages west of Jerusalem in 1948 by Zionist militias, a part of the
total of approximately 750,000 Palestinians who were forced from their
homes in what many historians have called “ethnic cleansing.”
At
the same time, however, the structure challenges the idea of the
temporariness of refugee camps, highlighting their increasing permanence
and the importance of the camp’s history of struggle and resistance
since 1948 by “embracing the contradictions of an architectural form
that emerges from exile.”
To do so, the structure’s
creators insist, does not detract from refugees’ right to return to
their original villages inside what is now Israel.
Instead,
they say, it emphasizes the strength of the community and culture that
have been formed as a result of nearly seven decades in exile, as well
as their continued insistence on reclaiming their stolen homes and land.
 |
| Children run outside of the concrete tent in the Duheisha refugee camp south of Bethlehem. (Campus in Camps/Sara Anna) |
'It reveals the contradictions in which we live'
The
concrete tent is the brainchild of Campus in Camps, a year-long
“experimental education program” for refugee youths from across the West
Bank that focuses on issues related to urbanism, space, and lived
experience in the refugee camps. The project is affiliated with DAAR,
the Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency based in nearby Beit Sahour.
Ishaq
Albarbary, a participant in Campus in Camps from Bethlehem’s Duheisha
refugee camp, told the crowd assembled at the structure’s inauguration
after a collective iftar on Friday that the concrete tent was a result
of three years of “discussion, reflection, and of challenging
ourselves.”
“The nature of our work at Campus in Camps is
to connect the practical and the theoretical,” he said. “At the same
time, we don’t want the discussion to always be internal between
ourselves, and so we decided to something material to open a space for
discussion about and for the society in which we live.“
The
concrete tent is not being presented as a solution. On the contrary, it
reveals the contradictions we live in,” he added, noting that they
hoped it would be used for meetings, discussions, and leisure.
Construction
of permanent structures in the refugee camps is an
ideologically-charged issue for Palestinians, as many refugees see any
hint of permanence in their surroundings as a tacit admission that they
will not return to the villages their families were expelled from.
Since
the camps’ humble start as a collection of UN-donated tents in the late
1940s and early 1950s, however, they have been dramatically
transformed. In the years after the establishment of the camps,
residents slowly began building mud walls and later adding cinder blocks
and eventually...
READ MORE
