Location: Shu'fat refugee camp, Jerusalem.
Background to the camp:
Established in 1966 over an area of 203 dunums from Shu'fat land. 3200 people lived in the camp once it was established. After the dismissal of the inhabitants of the Morocan quarter in the old city in 1967 war and after the dismissal of hundreds of families from Al- Sharaf quarter in mid seventies hundreds of Palestinian families moved to live in the camp. Today, the camp population totals 20000.
Under the pressure of need and population growth inside the camp, dozens of families were forced to build without license as many did before. Since 1968, the Israeli occupation authorities seized more than 4400 dunums from the lands of the three Palestinian villages of Shu'fat, Beit Hanina and Anata to build the settlement of Pisgat Ze'iv which has become a home for 35000 settlers.
At 05:00, on Monday, July 9th, 2001, thousands of Israeli troops stormed the camp from all directions to destroy 23 residential flats and houses causing the homelessness of more than 200 people. This act of massive destruction comes within the current Israeli policy of racial cleansing directed against the Palestinian people, in general, and Jerusalemites, in particular. (click for more)
Recently, Israeli settlers who live near the camp expressed resentment and un-satisfaction over the presence of Palestinian inhabitants in the area and demanded the blockade of Palestinian settlement expansion. In an interview with the Israeli Haartz newspaper published on 11.7.2001, Ihud Olmert, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem said that '' in the framework of any settlements with Palestinians, Shu'fat refugee camp must be eradicated by sending its inhabitants to live east of Jerusalem''. That is, to force them to live in the Palestinian authority areas east of the city and not inside the borders of the city itself.
Successive Israeli governments have looked at the camp as a stumbling block in the effort to close the circle around Jerusalem with the aim of isolating the city from it surrounding in the West bank.
The following table shows house demolition in Shu'fat in numbers
|
No. of houses/ flats |
Total area in m2 |
No. of rooms |
Total land area in dunums |
No. of family mem. |
No. of children |
|
23 |
4664 |
140 |
3970 |
215 |
106 |
Prepared by
The Land Research Center
LRC
