Word: jalazon
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Omar was one of 700 Palestinian youths from Jalazon rounded up during the first intifadeh. (At the worst of that struggle, which ran from 1987 to 1993, Israeli troops sealed off Jalazon for 45 days, cutting off electricity and shooting holes in water cisterns.) When he was released, Omar was swept right back into the violence. One day, he remembers, he was throwing rocks at Israeli solders: "I was shot in the hand. My friend next to me was hit in the chest. He died, and I survived. It could have been...
...sense of identity--and their rage--was sharpened by the spread of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories after the war. (There are now some 250,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and an additional 182,000 in East Jerusalem, which Israel has annexed.) Crowning the hill above Jalazon is the Beit El settlement. Remove the barbed-wire fencing, the security gate and guard towers, and Beit El's tidy rows of red-roofed houses and gardens could be mistaken for an Arizona suburb. A friend of Omar's named Yousef, a crude map of Palestine tattooed...
...Jalazon and other camps, a generational divide splits the Palestinians. The older ones, of Omar's age, belong to Fatah, the organization run by Arafat's hapless successor, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority. Those in their 20s and younger support militant Islamic groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. These radicals led the charge during the second intifadeh, which began in 2000, sending suicide bombers to blow up hundreds of Israeli civilians. Militants say that in the camp they have no shortage of young volunteers eager for martyrdom. As a parent, Omar says the last thing he wants...
...before we take on the Israelis." Those problems are real enough. Because of international sanctions against the Hamas government, salaries aren't paid, and most Palestinians are broke. As it has been since 1950, it is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that provides basic humanitarian aid to Jalazon and other Palestinian camps...
...says Omar, "but we want to go back to our land." It's the same thought his uncle had in 1967, listening to Egyptian radio, and it has as much chance of happening now as it did then. Forty years after their great disappointment, those who live in the Jalazon refugee camp know that it may be the only home that they, their children and their grandchildren ever know. [This article contains a complex diagram. Please see hardcopy of magazine...