- Title: WEST BANK: REFUGEES AT DE'HASHEH CAMP KEEP MEMORY AND CULTURE ALIVE
- Date: 14th May 2005
- Summary: (BN13)DE'HASHEH REFUGEE CAMP NEAR BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK (MAY 14, 2005) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. PULL OUT OF DE'HASHEH REFUGEE CAMP/LAS ZIAD ABBAS, REFUGEE FROM DE'HASHEH POINTING OUT DIFFERENT HOUSES AS HE VIEWS CAMP FROM ABOVE (2 SHOTS) 0.18 2. CLOSE OF ZIAD ABBAS SUN GLASSES WITH REFUGEE CAMP REFLECTION IN GLASSES 0.21 3. LV OF REFUGEE CA
- Embargoed: 29th May 2005 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: DE'HASHEH REFUGEE CAMP, BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK
- City:
- Country: Palestinian Territories
- Reuters ID: LVAA7U1BEQ3RSL48CODV8Q6RRT5C
- Story Text: Refugees at De'hasheh camp keep memory and culture alive.
Ziad Abbas is co-founder and co-director of Ibdaa Cultural Centre
located at the De'hasheh refugee camp in Bethlehem. This overcrowded refugee
camp is located on one kilometre square and is home to 12,000 refugees. It
was created in 1949 and mostly houses refugees who's homes and villages were
destroyed in the 1948 war which led to the creation of the State of
Israel.
On Sunday (May 15) Palestinians commemorated the 57th anniversary of
Nakba - the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948
war, which created the Palestinian refugee problem. During 1948 hundreds of
villages and towns that were inhibited by Palestinians were depopulated and
razed.
At De'hasheh refugee camp hope lives on as Ziad Abbas looks at the camp
from on top of a hill and jokingly points out the various satellite dishes on
the tin rooftops of the camp, but stops short of saying that life is good at
the camp. He dreams of the day in which he can return to his destroyed
village.
Abbas has dedicated his life go the education of the children at the
camp, to plant hope and a positive atmosphere amongst the youths.
"The first time I visited my village it was in 1998, what happened
to me was some kind of earthquake to my personality, I was shocked totally
after I visited my father's village and after that I visited my mother's
village. My commitment it became in my blood after I saw the villages after I
connected to the land, after I was dealing with my land with my house with my
grandparents trees some of the trees are still alive now, especially the olive
trees and the fig trees," Abbas said explaining how he first started
feeling a commitment towards the history, the destroyed villages and therefore
the children of the camp.
"Having decided to have this project so we decided to take the
children between 1998 and 2000 we took hundreds of children from De'hasheh
refugee camp to the destroyed villages and we took some people from the
catastrophe generation which they know the area so they were explaining for
the children about the villages to try to teach them, so we will not lose the
memory we will not lose the history," Abbas tells Reuters Television.
The Ibdaa Cultural Centre is a grassroots community-based project in
the West Bank's Palestinian De'hasheh refugee camp. The name,
"Ibdaa," is translated from Arabic as "creation" or
"creative ability". Since being founded in 1994, the Ibdaa Cultural
Centre has served more than 1,200 children and youth annually and providing
employment and income for more than 70 families in the refugee camp.
The mission of the Ibdaa Cultural Centre is to create a positive
atmosphere for children and young adults in the refugee camp to assist them in
developing competence, creativity and leadership skills through a range of
social, cultural and educational activities.
The Ibdaa Cultural Centre strives to empower children and instil the
confidence and discipline necessary for them to overcome the obstacles of
their difficult conditions while simultaneously educating the international
community about the Palestinian refugee issue.
Having toured in Europe, the United States and the Arab world, Ibdaa's
children dance group were proud to perform a special dance to commemorate the
57th anniversary of Al-Nakba. They dressed in their traditional Palestinian
attire and listened carefully to instructions and then performed before an
audience that was left captivated.
The children at Ibdaa are very well cultured and educated, they hope
for peace and justice as they continue to have a positive outlook on life and
the arts and to make their voices of resilience and resistance heard in a
unique and dignified manner.
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