Challenge no.57
 

A Summer Camp for Children of the Arab Working Class

by Ranya Tahan

You could see excitement and anticipation on the faces of the children. This was July 30, the final day of the ODA's week-long summer camp, when all three branches – Jaffa (60 children), Nazareth (85) and Majd al-Krum (150) – came together. They met in a forest on Mount Carmel. When they arrived, they found the trees already decked with their paintings.

The three groups had programs to perform for each other. A quiz was on the agenda too – topic: Palestinian history. For this was not the usual summer camp. The Workers Advice Center (WAC), based in Nazareth,  together with the Baqa centers in Majd al-Krum and Jaffa, organized the camp for the children of Arab workers, including the unemployed. The initiators wanted to counteract the tendency of the Israeli school system, which ignores Palestinian history. They sought to encourage the children to reclaim their past, as well as to value solidarity and working-class unity.

A group from WAC's camp in Nazareth performed a play they had improvised. They were given the following situation: A boss who runs his factory on an Arab Muslim workforce decides to fire a few. The workers elect a committee. It tries to negotiate, but the boss won't listen. He says he'll fire them all and bring Arab Christians to work instead. On this basis, the actors playing the Muslims had to come up with ways of persuading the player-Christians to join their struggle and not be used against them. In the version that was presented, they succeeded, and the Christians joined the picket line.

The camp had sixty "counselors" or "tutors", mostly volunteers. All gathered on July 10th for a day of training; they took a "crash course" on contents, pedagogy, handicrafts and social games. Each received a file with topics from Palestinian history, including the heroes of that history. In preparing these materials, the organizers felt they were also contributing to the education of the tutors themselves.

Highlights:

Jaffa

Jaffa's camp took place in the beleagured neighborhood of Karem al-Dalak. (Challenge # 44)  Forty children from the Deheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem joined as guests on July 29. Asma Agbarieh, the chief coordinator for all three branches, commented on their visit: "It confirms the bond between our people inside (the 1948 borders) and those in the Occupied Territories. We wanted our children here in Jaffa to meet their brothers and sisters from the camp and learn about their situation."

The Deheisheh children talked of many things, including their lack of water. "For three weeks we've had no water in our faucets," said fourteen- year-old Mu'atassam Legroz. "We've had to buy it and use it very carefully." After the first acquaintance, both groups, wearing the yellow T-shirt of the camp, marched down Jaffa's main street to the park where the evicted Sawaf family has been living in a tent for nine months. The children waved Palestinian flags they'd prepared that morning.

It was remarkable to see such a thing in the Israeli city of Jaffa. But that was merely the prelude. Twenty of the Deheisheh children belong to the internationally-acclaimed Ibda'a dance troupe. After lunch (donated by a Jaffa restaurant), they performed a "Story through Dance". Wearing beautiful Palestinian costumes, they presented three phases in the tale of Palestine: an idyllic version of its agricultural past, followed by the conquest of 1948, and the hoped-for resurrection.

Then the Jaffans and their landlocked guests went happily to swim in the Mediterranean.

Nazareth

This was WAC's first camp in the region. It was set near the destroyed Arab village of Lubia. The camp attracted children from Nazareth, Ibelin, and Uzeir-Rumaneh. Wehbe Badarneh, its chief counselor – who coordinates WAC in Nazareth – made this comment: "Our camp is unique because of its concern for the working class. We want to educate a new generation of children, who will be aware of their past and their present and the connection between them. We want them to understand why their grandparents were farmers and their parents are workers."

Two activities exemplified Badarneh's words. In the village of Uzeir, where the children were guests for a day, they performed a traditional "Palestinian wedding". The villagers invited the children for lunch in their homes, and the children paraded through the streets, showing their solidarity with the local workers, who suffer from chronic unemployment.

Majd al-Krum

It was the camp's sixth summer here. The children were lucky to have Rula Zeghayer with them. She taught them handicrafts, and they made beautiful Palestinian flags. Samya Nasser, the chief counselor, told Challenge: "In my generation this flag was forbidden. We were forced to wave the Israeli flag. Even today, within the Arab community, waving the Palestinian flag seems rebellious. People shy away from emphasizing their identity. We are subtly expected to adopt the Zionist version of things, to admire the 'Israeli way of life'. We in Baqa and WAC are trying to counter this by teaching the children about our common Palestinian heritage and struggle."
 

Shukran On behalf of the children and counselors, WAC and the al-Baqa centers would like to thank the following for their direct contributions: The Ecumenical Activities Committee from the canton of Bern in Switzerland; the Pontifical Mission in Jerusalem; Bilance from the Netherlands. We also wish to thank all the donors who support our educational and workers' projects. Without their help we could not have organized this wonderful activity. Special thanks go to BADIL of Bethlehem, which coordinated the activity in Lifta and arranged the visit of the Deheisheh children to Jaffa.

Ranya Tahan is a volunteer at the Baqa Center in Jaffa.