The entrance to the Ayda refugee camp, in Arabic “she who returns”, is an arch in the shape of a huge lock with a huge key on it, an object that is depicted almost everywhere: “It is the dream of our fathers,” they say – Since 1948 they have to leave the house with the keys, which we keep because one day we will return to our homes. In front, blackened by fire and paint, stands one of the Israeli Defense Forces’ watchtowers on the wall built in Bethlehem. And the challenge between the two worlds has been reignited more and more recently.
The last to pay the price for the tensions was a sixteen-year-old Palestinian, Mohamed Alì Azieh, two weeks ago: according to his family’s story, while fleeing the unrest, he was hit by a sniper who fired from one of his houses in those positions the towers that dominate the field. His is now among the dozens of boys’ faces painted on the camp’s dilapidated buildings. “Another martyr,” says the father not far from a drawing with the inscription: “Only tigers can survive here.” In Ayda, as in many other refugee camps, souvenir photos and painted pictures of the faces of killed teenagers, including those in the last few, are piling up Years of graffiti have been added to the walls telling of the armed resistance: here too, the rebellion is expressed through the street art with which we never stop decorating the huge gray concrete wall that separates the dense block from Israel. “Five thousand people live in one square kilometer, which completes the four generations of refugees, I represent the third,” says Mustafa Al Araj, 33, head of the youth center, which welcomes young people from different villages to numerous cultural activities.
There is also a museum dedicated to the recent history of Palestine: on the floor, a gas mask commemorates the episode in 2015 that occurred during the clashes in the camp, when an Israeli officer, later suspended from the army, threatened to “gas” the Palestinians. Palestinians if they hadn’t stopped throwing stones. Mustafa does not hesitate to address the Gaza issue: “Hamas is not the solution, but it has supporters in all Palestinian homes. Many of my friends are on their side because they say they are fighting against the occupation of the territories. The war did it.” “I took away a lot of people’s jobs, I was a tour guide,” he says, remembering that Banksy’s hotel itself, the hotel with “View of the Wall,” which was always crowded and by the artist was financed, remained closed after October 7th.
Not far away, still close to the historic center of Bethlehem, two barely grown boys make their way to the Dheisheh camp, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site by the winners of the Venice Biennale as the site of the largest living expulsion in the world was appointed. A day ago there was a raid on a local building, the Ibdaa Center (meaning Creation), which was founded in 1994 and where on the interior walls hang huge frescoes that tell the story of the last 75 years of the Palestinians’ armed struggle since then Times of the Nakba: If you climb the stairs on the walls you see women in chains, young people with slingshots, tents and people waving Molotov cocktails at tanks. “When the soldiers arrived last night, there was no one there, they broke the door locks and took the computers and some money from the cash fund, six thousand shekels. I don’t know what they were looking for, here we are. “Teach the children music, sports, sewing, art, but also how our people lived,” explains Khaled, one of the leaders of the center that “historical forgetting” not accepted: “Have you forgotten? Three years before 1948, you Italians,” sang Bella Ciao”.
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