SEATTLE, 20 June — Over 52 years have passed since Khan Yunis refugee camp was founded as “temporary shelter” for Palestinian refugees.
The home of over 60,000 refugees is now one of the most crowded spots on earth. For a stranger to wander through its narrow alleyways and makeshift houses, by the mounting garbage piles and impoverished streets and markets, one would then realize that human misery is not an abstract concept, but a living reality.
But beyond the misery and despair, human triumph stands, narrating a story of a dignified nation, who learned to survive despite repeated massacres, and fought to rebuild what the invaders destroyed.
The camp was once more assaulted on April 11.
As I followed the TV screen while a reporter’s camera scanned the horrifying damage inflicted by Israeli bombs and bulldozers on the sleeping camp, many thoughts crossed my mind, memories of past years and images of history I cannot dare forget.
The Israeli assault was said to be the first incident where Israel re-entered PA controlled territories. Press reports succeeded in depicting most of the damage, narrating the suffering and emphasizing the sense of loss felt by hundreds of now homeless refugees.
But the horror felt by a mother whose house was bulldozed while her children slept inside can never be described by mere words.
For 21 years of my life, I lived in a camp only a few miles to the north of Khan Yunis refugee camp. Yet while my refugee camp carried its share of despair and resistance, Khan Yunis was always perceived differently, it was a true legend in the eyes of most refugees.
“The Castle of Revolution” the town of Khan Yunis and its refugee camp were dubbed during the 1987 Intifada.
But the legend started much earlier. In March 11, 1956, the camp was the stage of a gruesome massacre perpetrating by the Israeli army during its short-lived occupation of Sinai and the Gaza Strip. According to UNRWA, who led an investigation into Israel’s random killing of civilians in the camp, 275 refugees were killed in one night. For days, Israel refused to allow the burial of the bodies scattered about the camp.
Finally, under “international pressure” the victims of the massacre were buried in a mass grave.
While the Israeli massacre was aimed at suppressing the camp’s resistance, the opposite was true. The camp’s survivors pioneered the Palestinian revolution, which took its toll following the second occupation of the Gaza Strip in 1967.
Khan Yunis refugee camp then became the home of armed revolution, the home of a large population of prisoners, and the town in which poets and intellectuals were produced in abundance.
Israel, aware of the danger that the impoverished camp contained, made the refugee camp its top priorities during the past intifada. Dozens of people were killed, thousands injured, maimed and arrested, yet the camp grew and the flame of resistance never faded despite all efforts.
Years after the signing of the Oslo accord in 1993, Khan Yunis refugee camp held to its title: A refugee camp. It remained a home of refugees, whose plight worsened, and their disparity grew.
The human tragedy became clearly highlighted, as the Jewish settlements neighboring the small camp became a reason for more pain to the refugees.
Living in fancy villas and enjoying their private swimming pools, Jewish settlers continued their never-ending episode of harassment. Palestinian land continued to be seized, and roads separating Gaza’s north and south were repeatedly cut of, in addition to the occasional yet never investigated shootings of Palestinians. And then the Aqsa intifada exploded.
While Khan Yunis refugee camp’s part of the resistance remained within the permissible boundaries of self-defense, Israel’s assaults crossed all boundaries of civility, human rights and international law.
It seems that the Israeli generals never forgot how tough the refugees could be, so they tried to once again tame them, or so they thought.
Three months after the outbreak of the intifada, Israel began using illegal gas against Palestinians, starting with the camp’s residents. 60 cases of unexplained symptoms such as uncontrollable hysteria were reported among the residents. The PA stood helpless, sought French and Dutch help, and appealed to the UN to intervene. But nothing was done.
Then the camp was cut off, and savagely attacked, often by guided missiles and gunship helicopters. Many homes were damaged, people killed, including children, and fear once again became the theme.
A strong believer in ruthless military strategy, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon finally decided to “go in and destroy the same posts from which our communities were shelled,” as uttered by Israel’s War Minister, Ben-Eliezer.
Eliezer told reporters following the destruction of the camp, “there are points we don’t want Palestinians to return to.” “This is a clear act of defense,” he added.
But Eliezer’s self defense strategy was narrated differently by a camp resident, Imad Abu Namous, whose home was leveled an hour after midnight.
“We started running from our homes, while they were firing toward us and bulldozers started destroying our homes without giving us warning, without giving us a chance to take out some clothes and furniture,” he lamented.
A 9-year-old boy, Osama Hassouneh wept as he stood by the rubble of his home. “I lost my toy car. I hate them the Israelis,” he sobbed as he held on a melted red piece of plastic his father bought him in his way back from his pilgrimage to Makkah. 30 homes were destroyed that night, two people killed and dozens injured.
Yet they returned the next morning, salvaging half-burnt blankets, pots and pans and pillows. Some gazed at the wreckage, pondering how they could find the strength to start all over, and others cried from a nightmare from which they may never recover. But it’s Khan Yunis refugee camp, a place so dignified and so proud that it could never kneel to its invaders. Israel worked hard to destroy the camp that night. Collective efforts of dedicated soldiers and settlers succeeded in ruining an entire neighborhood.
Yet as a TV camera wandered around, it paused as it reached a single wall that was still standing, filled with colorful graffiti, images drawn with the colors of the Palestinian flag.
It was a picture of a fist, breaking chains and bursting out of the ground. And a tree, its trunk shaped as a face of an innocent boy, and the roots were human arms holding tight to the soil.
And below, a short statement in Arabic read, “like the trees we die standing.”
