(Stefan Christoff spent part of the month of December in the Al-Baqa’a refugee camp in Jordan.)
Al-Baqa’a is Jordan’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, located on theoutskirts of Amman and home to more than 100,000 refugees. In the heart ofone of Jordan’s many desert valleys, at night, Al-Baqa’a is a beautifularray of lights sparkling below the wealthy hilltops of Amman. During the day, it emerges as an impoverishedPalestinian community of countless markets and shops lining small crowdedstreets of makeshift homes.
The Palestinian refugees who make up Al-Baqa’a are from throughout the1948 lands of Palestine, displaced by force from their homes during boththe 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars. The residents of Al-Baqa’a are justone manifestation of the millions of Palestinian refugees scatteredthroughout the world.
Most residents of Al-Baqa’a view their community as temporary. If you ask small children, born in Al-Baqa’a, where they are from, they will sayHaifa or Jerusalem, naming the cities and towns from which theirgrandparents or parents were displaced.
As Abu Nayef, the camp’s representative to the Palestinian LiberationOrganization (PLO) explained to me: “Palestinian refugees throughout theworld have lost the three elements of life at the hands of Israel: theirland, their blood and their dignity.”
For Abu Nayef, a highly respected community leader displaced from his homein 1948, life in Al-Baqa’a is defined through the struggle to return toPalestine.
The daily conditions in Al-Baqa’a are a dramatic contrast to the modern,urban environment of Amman, just a 20 minute drive away. Al-Baqa’aoriginated in 1967 with tents and makeshift shacks, but now constitutes acommunity of small crowded homes, businesses, mosques and schools, allhastily constructed.
The Palestinians of Al-Baqa’a are historically self-reliant, havingreceived minimal assistance from UNRWA (the United Nations Relief andWorks Agency) or the Jordanian government. Like most Palestinian refugeecamps throughout Jordan, the residents of Al-Baqa’a have been left tobuild their community independently, with little external economicsupport.
The small crowded streets of Al-Baqa’a make it impossible to for two carsto pass each other. The small markets and stores facilitate the littleinternal economy within the camp. The bulk of the camp’s economy is basedon providing cheap labour to the more privileged areas of Amman. Dozens ofbuses leave Al-Baqa’a in the early hours of the morning, where thousandsof Palestinian refugees clean the toilets and cook the food of Amman’seconomic and political elite.
As Dr. Nabil Hirsh, a Palestinian refugee from Al-Baqa’a who founded a 24hour health clinic more than 30 years ago, explains, “Many older womenfrom the camp go to work in Amman as cleaners and maids for families andcompanies. Many men from the camp go to Amman to work in construction.This camp is Amman’s greatest supplier of workers.”
Given the poor living and working conditions, many of Al-Baqa’a’s youthare becoming increasingly disenchanted with life at the camp. As themanager of the Al-Baqa’a youth club, who asked not be named, explained,“Life is not good, our biggest problem is poverty. At this club we takecare of over 120 children whose families can’t provide for them. Thepoverty here is so bad, there are no jobs, no employment. When visitingsome families in the camp you will find that they have no food and clothesfor their children.”
The millions of Palestinian refugees who are living in Jordan do not havethe same economic and social opportunities as Jordan’s political andeconomic elites. Very few Palestinians hold positions in Jordan’sParliament, where political decisions are made for a country whosePalestinian population is estimated at more than 60 per cent. Jordan’s politicaland economic future, as well as its political stances towards Israel, arenot determined by the majority of Jordanian residents who are displacedPalestinians.
Al-Baqa’a was established during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war that sawhundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees fleeing deeper into Jordan.Many of the refugees at Al-Baqa’a fled from the town of Karameh in theJordan Valley, just a one-hour walk from the Israeli border.
Karameh is famous for a 1968 battle when over 15,000 Israeli infantry,supported by tank units and helicopters, marched over the Allenby Bridge.At the time, Karameh was the political and military headquarters of thePalestinian al-Fatah movement. At the Battle of Karameh, thetechnologically-advanced, better-equipped and larger Israeli army wasforced to retreat, leaving Karameh to the Palestinians. The Battle ofKarameh represented the Palestiniansâe(TM) greatest military victory up to thattime, and sent a surge of optimism through the Palestinian community, aswell as helping establish the Palestinian claim to being a genuinenational liberation movement.
However, the Israeli incursion left behind a destroyed village, forcingmany Palestinian refugees to leave Karameh and re-settle inJordan, many at Al-Baqa’a.
The history of Palestinian resistance — as well as the struggle to keepalive the right of return — is apparent in any conversation with theresidents of Al-Baqa’a. If you walk through Al-Baqa’a camp today and askpeople on the street about the right of return, you will find a similarresponse: as most other Palestinian refugees around the world are,they are waiting, struggling and fighting to return to Palestine.
Jordan’s ruling monarch, King Abdullah, recently launched a nationalcampaign named “Jordan First” which has been presented publicly as a planto end Palestinian-Jordanian tensions. However, making efforts to improvethe conditions of refugees, and attacking the origins of the refugeeproblem, seems last on King Abdullah’s list of priorities.
In light of the structural political and economic disadvantages defininglife for Jordan’s Palestinians, especially those living in refugee camps,it is the claim of “right of return” to Palestine that keeps people’s hopefor a life of dignity alive.
The manager of the Al-Baqa’a youth club explained the right of return fromthe perspective of Palestinians living in the camps as follows: “Being aPalestinian refugee in Al-Baqa’a means that you are looking for Jerusalemdaily; if you can’t see Jerusalem when waking in the morning, you see itin your dreams. We always look to Palestine our homeland.”
Al-Baqa’a is a living reminder of the tragedy of the world’s millions ofPalestinian refugees. The right of return has been the central issue ofthe Palestinian struggle for liberation throughout the world, and it islikewise the central issue in the lives of the residents of Al-Baqa’a.
Recently, media have focused on the signing of the GenevaAccord, negotiated by ex-Israeli and Palestinian politicians. One keyconcession of the Geneva Accord is for the Palestinian side to sign awaythe right of return for the worlds’ millions of Palestinian refugees.
When you ask about the Geneva Accord on the streets of Al-Baqa’a, peopleanswer with disgusted looks as they see it as nothing but the furtherdismissal of the history of the Palestinian struggle in its failure torecognize that the right of return for Palestinian refugees. For theresidents of Al-Baqa’a, the right of return is not something that can benegotiated away by corrupt politicians of the Palestinian Authority, or byany government or nation-state.
The stark contrast between the pronouncements of Israeli and Palestinianpoliticians in Geneva, and the words spoken by the people on the streetsof Al-Baqa’a, are a reminder that liberation struggles cannot be definedby politicians, and that the principles of the Palestinian struggle arekept alive by those living on-the-ground in Palestine and in the refugeecamps throughout the world.
As Khaled Ramadan, a political activist with the Amman-basedPopular Committee in Support of Iraq and the Intifada explained,“Political agreements such as the Geneva Accord are an attempt to jump onthe right of all Palestinians to return to all of Palestine. The Genevainitiative will meet many obstacles because the Palestinian people willstruggle to return not only to 1967 territories but will struggle andfight to return to all of Palestine. This is our right.”
The terms by which the world views and supports liberation struggles mustbe set by those directly affected; in the case of the Palestinians, themajority of those directly affected are the refugees who make up two-thirds ofthe population. Palestinian refugees — the majority of whom arescattered throughout the Arab world — continue to live as second classcitizens in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, where they endureimpoverished living conditions in camps such as Al-Baqa’a waiting toreturn to Palestine. The Geneva Accord fails to recognize the loss of dignity, land and blood,which defines the history of Palestinians and their struggle for freedom.
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