HAISSAM ABU HAASHI, aged 30 and from New Askar refugee camp, is a trained primary school teacher. He has worked as a metal-cutter, painter and decorator, joiner, telephone repair mechanic and an operative in a factory manufacturing air-conditioning equipment, but never in a school. 

We were talking as we walked through the drab, narrow and poorly maintained streets of the camp, situated on the outskirts of the Palestinian West Bank city of Nablus, where 7,000 people live in an area of about 0.035 square miles. 

Haissam’s grandparents Mohammed and Fatima had been farmers near Jaffa, in present-day Israel. In 1948, having been forced to flee because they were Palestinians, they arrived in Nablus — at the time a city in Jordan — where they lived for six months before moving to Askar, a refugee camp set up by the United Nations Works & Relief Agency (UNWRA). The agency was established in 1949 to oversee the immediate needs of Palestinian refugees. 

For 10 years they lived in a tent with their seven children, one of whom was Haissam’s father, before being given a one-room unit with outside washing and cooking facilities.

Haissam continued: “When my parents married, they were given their own single unit (essentially a shack consisting of a double room) in New Askar, an extension of Askar camp about two miles away, where land had been leased to provide room for the overflow from Askar. 

“Then the whole family came together to build a house in New Askar, which is where I was born, and until the age of nine I lived in one room with my parents and four brothers and sisters in a house where 30 people — two uncles and their families, my grandparents and, of course, my own family — lived each to one room, sharing a kitchen and washing facilities. 

“In 1991 my family was fortunate in being able to move to our own three-bedroom house as my father had saved some money after working illegally in Israel and as a taxi driver in Nablus.”

As a child, Haissam walked to and from school in the old Askar camp, where he studied in classes of 50-55 pupils. A bright student, he continued to university in Nablus where he enrolled on a teacher-training course, but then found himself on a road to nowhere.

“But when I was at school,” he told me, “what really left a lasting impression on me weren’t my studies, but the second intifada. I saw for myself soldiers killing people, including children, leaving pools of blood on the ground. Homes were destroyed and families left in the street.” 

Haissam remains bitter about his childhood experiences, a bitterness which is reinforced by the life he sees around him today. About 70 per cent of the population in the 19 refugee camps in the West Bank, including New Askar, is aged under 18 and only a very small proportion find work after leaving school. Resentful and bored, living in claustrophobic, neglected and overcrowded conditions, many young people resort to recreational drug-taking, which has become rife. 

Added to this, Israeli soldiers enter the camp once or twice a week to harass, attack and arrest young people, stoking anger and overt hostility. Naser Zer, a social worker from the camp, told me how during the Israeli attacks on Gaza in the summer of 2014 there were demonstrations which led to increased violence and arrests.

He described how “the soldiers still come to party with tear gas, sound and skunk bombs and by shooting live or rubber bullets,” adding that many young men had expressed to him their wish to go to Gaza to fight and die. 

In recent years, New Askar has requested UN recognition as a camp in its own right, due to its distance from the older camp. Despite the camp’s increasing population, the UN has not yet reached a decision on the matter and the UNWRA is still reluctant to provide full community facilities. 

Relying on ever-decreasing donations from other countries (its funding gap for 2015 is estimated at £97.7 million) and with increasing responsibilities towards Palestinian refugees because of the violence in Syria and Gaza, the UNWRA’s services generally have been reduced significantly, which can be seen in New Askar’s (and indeed other camps in the area, such as Balata’s) unkempt streets — many more like alleys — with their waste dumps, or the dilapidated and dangerous state of the children’s playground in an area full of rubble. 

However the UNWRA has provided one significant improvement. Until 2010 the only schooling in the camp was provided by two small voluntary schools set up with donations from Sweden and a US charity. In 2010, the agency provided two large secondary schools, one for each sex, thus avoiding the long trek to school in old Askar for the children. 

Next, I spoke with Amjad Rfaie, aged 43, also born in New Askar, who has opened a hostel in Nablus for overseas volunteers working in the camp. In 1948 Amjad’s grandparents, who owned a grocer’s shop in Jaffa, fled to Nablus, his father having been born on the road there. Once in Nablus his grandparents opened a salt wholesaler and until 1964 the family, which included 11 children, lived in extremely cramped conditions above the shop.

That year they moved to New Askar and opened a grocery shop there, where Amjad’s father worked. Following his marriage, all the children, including Amjad, were born and brought up in the camp.

Since 1988, Amjad has belonged to New Askar’s PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) popular services committee (PSC). PSCs exist in all of the refugee camps in the West Bank and they function as an umbrella organisation to provide services which complement those provided by the UNWRA, such as the provision of social services and some street maintenance.

To carry out their work, the committee — comprised of members of different political parties — receives money from the Palestine Authority (PA) and from NGOs and charities, mainly European and North American. Today its services are needed more than ever, not just because of the UNWRA’s dwindling support but because the donors themselves are experiencing severe financial constraints. Tax revenues for the already cash-strapped PA are frequently withheld by Israel, while overseas NGOs and charities are also struggling to obtain funds in times of economic austerity in their own countries.

Amjad explained that the main problems in the camp were poverty, inadequate housing, grossly inadequate services and poor health. However, because of the constraints described above, the PSC’s reach is very limited. At present it concentrates on helping the 5-7 per cent of residents who live in absolute poverty by providing financial support, medical insurance and attempting to remedy the deficiencies in the health and social care facilities provided by the UNWRA. 

“Although the UNWRA is responsible for providing adequate healthcare, we have a severe shortage of doctors. We even have to supply medicines as those we receive from the UNWRA are insufficient,” he told me. “There are no physiotherapists in New or old Askar, and patients from these camps have to attend the clinic in Balata camp over three miles away, where there is one physiotherapist who serves all three camps. There is a vaccination programme, but no education in preventative care despite the fact that diabetes is a major health concern. 

“Until 2011, the UNWRA funded a rehabilitation centre in our camp with a psychologist, a physiotherapist, a speech and an occupational therapist, together with a social worker, three teachers in special education and a part-time doctor. “When funding from the UNWRA dried up, the centre continued to function thanks to the US NGO Flagship, but that only lasted for a year. Now we offer a substantially reduced service through the minimal funding we receive from a Belgian NGO.”

Amjad stressed how the PSC focuses much of its support on children, as under-14s make up about 40 per cent of the camp’s population. Its first projects were based on art therapy for children (like Haissam) traumatised by their experiences of the second intifada. Amjad described how, over time, children changed from drawing tanks, destruction and dead bodies to trees, gardens, animals and birds.

In 2005, following individual initiatives by the camp’s inhabitants, the As-Safir Social Development Centre was opened to provide facilities for children in the camp. It is run by the PSC and now offers sessions in art, dance, drama, music and sport, as well as a library (maintained by funds from Norway), language courses, a computer room, after-school homework support and workshops for parents and children. Disabled children also attend the centre and all the sessions are open to boys and girls.

Other services provided by the PSC include running an orphanage and a nursery school for orphans and it is seeking funding to improve the cramped, overcrowded and insanitary housing conditions in New Askar. Amjad acknowledged that other vulnerable groups were less well catered-for. Adolescents receive less support than children, although different sports activities are available and a number of adolescents become volunteers at the As-Safir centre. Mental health services appear to be provided by just one psychologist and provision for the elderly is left in the hands of Muslim and Christian associations, most of them from abroad.  

In the West Bank, as well as in Jordan and Syria before the violence, refugees have had the option of living and working outside their camps. However for thousands, like Haissam, such an option would be unthinkable: “My camp is like my family,” he told me. “It’s my second home. The people here give me strength. Although we are very poor, people share what they have. The conditions are bad, but I never feel depressed about living here.”

Amjad, who is living in Nablus for work and family reasons, tends to agree: “If I had my way, I’d move straight back into New Askar camp,” he declared. When the Palestinian refugee camps were set up over 64 years ago, they were intended as a temporary measure to house the approximately 750,000 people who had fled from their homes until they were able to return. Palestinians are the largest and longest-standing refugee community in the world and they now total 5.1 million — one third of all refugees. 

In all the UNWRA camps in the Middle East, there are families who still hold the keys to their former homes and the key has become the symbol of their right of return, a right confirmed by UN resolutions 194 III, passed in December 1948, and 3236, passed in November 1974 (the latter opposed by the US with Britain abstaining) and with which Israel has always refused to comply. In resolution 3236 this right was described as “inalienable.”

When I asked Haissam how he viewed the prospects of returning home, he could only think of the short term — the need to resist attacks and the Israeli occupation: “In any other country, people would be destroyed by the treatment inflicted upon us by the Israelis. But Palestinians are strong. We will resist.” 

He added: “The situation is becoming worse and I expect we’ll see a third intifada in the near future. I don’t think we’ll ever find peace.” Amjad was slightly more optimistic: “Palestinians must always have hope. If we keep striving for what is ours by right, we’ll win in the end. Permanent exile is not on the cards.” 

• Jenny Kassman is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a signatory to Jews for Justice for Palestinians. 
• World Refugee Day takes place on Saturday June 20. www.un.org/en/events/refugeeday/