Dheisheh refugee camp, located near the city of Bethlehem in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, is one of fifty-nine Palestinian refugee camps dispersed throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. It was established after the expulsion and flight of more than 750,000 Palestinians who were displaced by the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Those that fled to Dheisheh originated from forty-five villages west of Jerusalem and Hebron. Their descendants now comprise the 11,000 inhabitants living in the camp today on less than one square kilometer of land. Only two under-resourced schools and one part time doctor serve the needs of the entire camp.

A resilient and active community, Dheisheh has a long history of struggle. Until the Israeli army’s withdrawal in 1995, the camp was surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence that sealed all but one of the fourteen camp entrances. The Israeli army controlled this single entrance with a revolving gate. The Social Youth Activity Center, which was the primary youth organization in the camp, was closed by military order from 1981 until 1993. Soldiers and violent confrontations filled the alleys, killing dozens of residents, while hundreds were injured, imprisoned, and disabled for life. During the years of the Oslo peace process, the plight of refugees was largely ignored in the negotiation framework, bringing a continued sense of stagnation and desperation to the community.

Since the start of the Intifada in September 2000, the Palestinian struggle to end thirty-seven years of Israeli occupation was met with unprecedented levels of military violence. Using US-manufactured helicopters and tanks, the Israeli military shelled Palestinian communities, destroying homes and killing hundreds of people. In Dheisheh, soldiers have opened fire on children, blocked families in their homes for days with little access to food or water, and denied emergency medical care to the sick and injured.

The Israeli occupation has had a particularly strong impact on the women in Dheisheh. With many men in jail, killed, injured, or restricted in their ability to travel to find work, women have increasingly become the sole providers for their families. They are responsible for income generation, home maintenance, education and care of children, and care for elderly and injured family members. As a result, many women find themselves suffering from increasingly difficult circumstances with fewer places to turn to for help or opportunities to struggle for change.

Yet those hardest hit by today’s deepening poverty and military violence are the children, who make up more than 50% of Dheisheha’s population. Severe human rights abuses, political instability and violence have deprived Palestinian refugee children of the basic pleasures of childhood. Like all Palestinian children, every child in Dheisheh has been traumatized by military invasions into their community, house raids in the dead of night, and arrests and murders of family members and friends. Almost every child in Dheisheh has lost classmates, neighbors, or family members in violent deaths or to imprisonment.