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“This is normal. We’ve got used to it!” Salah, the director of the Lajee
Centre, responded to me when I commented that the centre smelt of tear
gas even though that day’s clashes had not started yet. The Lajee Centre
(lajee means “refugee” in Arabic) is a Palestinian creative cultural
centre for children and youth that was established in 2001 at the Aida
Refugee Camp in Bethlehem. Believing in its ideology and support of
national, human and moral rights, I joined the Lajee Centre when I was
14 years old.
On Sunday, January 19, 2014, I met some of the children who participate
in the daily activities of the centre in order to learn about their
daily experience in the camp. It was 11am when I left my house at the
entrance of the Aida Camp and walked the 50 metres between my house and
the centre. Nowadays, even a two-minute walk from my house to the centre
is a challenge. The clashes start sometimes early in the morning, other
times in the afternoon, and continue until after sunset. Reaching the
Lajee Centre, which is located between the military base at Rachel’s
Tomb and the UN distribution centre at the entrance of the camp, becomes
a mission impossible. This street is normally the main site for the
demonstrations between the youth and the Israeli soldiers.
Walking from my house to the Lajee Centre I notice the bricks and
stones covering every inch of the street that are left from yesterday’s
demonstrations along with rubber bullets and tear-gas canisters. Closer
to the centre I see two small boys. Upon seeing me, one of them points
his finger at the blue gate of the apartheid Separation Wall and says to
me, “look! They opened the gate and came out with a jeep. They will
stand there until the kids come and see them, then the kids will throw
stones at them.” The second child continues, “there are eight soldiers
standing there now. More will come later”. I notice that the soldiers
are walking down towards the Lajee Centre. The older child continues in a
proud tone of voice, “now I do not run when they start shooting, as I
have got used to the sound. It is aadi (normal).”
A little girl who looks seven or eight is near the centre and she runs
towards the camp when she sees the Israeli soldiers. When she approaches
us she says, “I better go and hide at home. The soldiers will start
shooting soon, zay dayman (like always).” I walk up the steps to the
centre and see a mural of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
Kefah, the librarian of the Lajee Centre, stands to greet me. She speaks
to me about today’s activities with the children. The aim is to give
the children the chance to express their feelings and talk about their
experience of two days ago, she says.
“On Friday,” she said, “we had a regular storytelling activity for the
children. The kids started coming to the centre around 10am. Together we
read a story, played some games and watched an animated film. Around
1pm, 30 children of seven to 14 years old were at the centre playing
games and drawing. At 2pm, the Lajee Senior Dabkeh Troupe (15-20 years
old) had their regular dabkeh (dance) practice. When the children and
the youth tried to leave the centre for their houses around 4pm, they
were trapped in the centre because the Israeli soldiers fired tear gas
continuously into the camp.”
“A few minutes later, ten heavily armed soldiers stormed the centre. A
member of the dance troupe was handcuffed, while others had to show
their identity cards. Together with the volunteers, the children were
locked in the library. Our staff remained firm in the face of the
soldiers to protect our children; about half an hour later, the soldiers
left. Even though we were able to keep the children physically
unharmed, they were deeply affected by this experience. Mothers rushed
to the centre to pick up their children and take them home. Once
outside, they were again affected by the soldiers firing tear gas. We
tried to go to the camp, but we could not see. It was not fog, but a
thick cloud of tear gas.”
A day after these events, only three children showed up for Kefah’s
storytelling activity. Kefah says that she is worried that fewer
children will start coming to the centre. Yet, when I go into the centre
today about 15 children attend the library activities. When asked to do
freestyle painting, eight-year-old Raghd says, “I will draw the
soldiers, the kids throwing stones at them, and the big jeep with the
tear gas machine that shoots nine gas canisters at once.” Responding to
Raghd’s suggestion, nine-year-old Salma says, “I want to draw the
library, the books and the library activities that took place while the
soldiers were shooting at the camp. I will draw Rand and the other kids
who were scared that the soldiers would go into the library.”
Salma and some other kids teased Rand because she had cried when she
was locked with the other children in the library two days ago. Raghd
comments that one should not be afraid of the soldiers. She says, “I am
used to seeing the soldiers now. After all, they enter the camp every
day, if not during the day then at night, sometimes both. They arrest
people and shoot. It is normal, and I am not afraid of them anymore.”
She continues by saying that “the soldiers are cowards. Are they afraid
of children? Yes. They hold big guns, wear heavy clothes and helmets,
and have a big jeep. Yet, these soldiers attack kids and hide behind the
garbage from which they shoot tear gas, rubber bullets and live bullets
at children. The children only have stones but the soldiers fear them.”
Feeling encouraged to speak by the words of her sister, Rand comments,
“I saw the soldiers when they came to our house last week. It was at
night. I woke up, and the soldiers were in our house. I did not cry.”
When I ask what the soldiers did at the house, Rand says, “they searched
the kitchen and the rooms, and they talked to my father. When they
left, my father was talking to my grandmother downstairs; eight soldiers
went to their house. My mother looked out of the window and said there
were more soldiers on the street. My mother said it was normal. The
soldiers always come at night. But still I did not cry,” she reassures
me.
Raghd comments, “Rawand, my baby sister, cannot leave the house, my
mother says. We keep all the windows and doors closed so that she will
not smell tear gas. Yesterday, she smelled it and coughed all day. Her
nose turned red.” When I asked the girls if they thought that tear gas
was dangerous, Raghd said, “a few months ago, after similar clashes, we
found a tear gas canister under the lemon tree that my father planted on
the roof of our house. After a few days the tree turned completely dry,
the fruit fell off, and in a week the tree was dead.” Although I am
surprised to hear this from Raghd, it was not the first time I had heard
such things. A few weeks ago, a similar thing happened to an old olive
tree that our neighbours had planted. After finding a tear gas canister
under the trunk of the tree, half of the tree died while the other half
survived.
While talking to the kids, nine-year-old Ehab enters the library. He
opens his hands to show the collection he has gathered on his way to the
centre. Between his hands he is holding three rubber bullets, two
bottoms of live bullets, and three different types of tear gas canister.
He says, “look! I collected these! They were on the street from
yesterday’s shooting. The children collected more yesterday. And more
are left.” Yumna, aged eight, picks one of the bullets from Ehab’s hands
and comments, “this is a rubber bullet. But look at the inside – it is
steel. My cousin was shot by one of these while he was filming a
demonstration. His cheek was smashed and his bone had to be replaced by
metal.”
While the children continue their painting, we hear some shooting
outside the centre. Living through these circumstances on a daily basis,
the children do not need to go to the window to know what is happening
outside. Everyone knows by Rand’s immediate reaction, since upon hearing
the shooting she crawls under the table and hides her face between her
hands. I can tell from the movement of her head, hands and shoulders
that Rand is crying.
When I look out of the window, I can see about 20 children near the
physical entrance to the camp. Some are throwing stones, while others
are collecting them. About 30 metres from the children, four soldiers
are shooting from behind the garbage, four are sneaking into a
neighbouring house, while some more are in a jeep about 50 metres away.
Four more soldiers are walking down from the jeep towards the centre.
They kick the gate of Lajee’s garden and try to enter.
After failing to kick to open the gate, the soldiers give up and move
towards the door of the centre. Salah, hearing hard knocking on the
centre’s door, runs down the stairs to confront the soldiers and prevent
them from storming into the centre. Salah opens the door and refuses to
allow the soldiers in. He tells them that there are only children in
the centre and that they cannot use the centre as a shooting point.
Again, for Salah and the people at the centre, this has become a normal
encounter.
But is any of this normal, I wonder. None of this should be normal. One
only needs to look at Rand’s crying face to realise that it is not
normal for children to see an army invading their place of residence on a
daily basis. One knows that life in the Aida Camp is not normal when
six-year-old Rand wishes that her pregnant mother will not have a boy.
“He will be arrested like uncle Said,” she says. “The soldiers came at
night, took him away from home, and I never saw him again.”
Rand’s wish comes true, yet her baby sister Rawand also has to suffer
from the tear gas that reaches her bedroom. It is not normal to know
that one of the first words Raghd said when she was just a few months
old was jaish (army). It is not normal to wake up and see soldiers in
Salma’s living room, searching in her cupboards and walking on top of
her toys. It is abnormal when 5,000 children, women, men and elderly
people have to endure tear gas and shooting on a daily basis.
Normal would be when the children sit in the Lajee Centre’s library to
draw flowers, happy faces and colourful images. In a normal situation
Salah would be working on a new project to develop the lives of the
children instead of trying to keep soldiers from invading the centre. In
a normal situation instead of the children standing at the window to
look at soldiers shooting other children they would be in the garden
playing games.
The life of a Palestinian refugee is not normal. We can never be
satisfied if life under occupation is called normal. People should be
born free and live with dignity. We cannot be satisfied if it is thought
normal to live in a refugee camp when our land sits mere kilometres
away. Normal would be for the children to be playing on their original
land in Ajur, Beit Jibrin, Al-Walajah, Ras Abu Amar, Al-Kabu and other
places. More and more abnormal events are turning into normal
experiences for the people of the Aida Camp. But normal can never be the
violation of our rights nor daily injustice. Normal is freedom and a
life of dignity, nothing less.
Since this article was written, a 12-year-old child was shot in the
Al-Azza Camp with a live bullet using a silencer on the gun, a violation
of international law. Six youths were arrested. One child was shot in
the face with a rubber-coated steel bullet; another was shot in the
foot. In addition, the activities coordinator of the Lajee Centre was
struck with a rubber-coated steel bullet in his head, requiring
stitches. On the same day, the Israeli soldiers sprayed the Lajee Centre
and the camp as a whole with filthy water that caused a nauseating
smell that lasted for hours.
The writer is a Palestinian refugee living in the Aida Refugee Camp
and an MPhil candidate in the Anthropology of Development Programme at
the University of Bergen, Norway.
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