What were the Palestinian refugee camps like?
It’s hard to imagine refugee camps if you’ve never seen one. I never knew if I should picture tents, or what. But they’re basically a series of shacks, temporary housing piled up into small plots of space, and then some people who clearly know they’re going to be stuck there for a while have built actual houses around the edges. There are shops and merchants with carts. There are old sections where people initially were placed after being evicted from their homes and land, and new sections, where the camps have had to expand as the population grows over the decades. They’re supposedly administered by the United Nations, and have UN schools etc., but I still haven’t figured out why the UN would allow the Israeli army the occupying army to patrol the camps and shoot people. Which they do, regularly. What we saw in Al Amri camp was shocking because it was so violent, and so senseless. No matter what you think of the military, you do have a basic expectation that the things they do are goi
