PA isolates West Bank camps
The PA’s crackdown on West Bank refugee camps and withholding of aid is adding to the marginalization of the youth.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — In the Balata refugee camp in east Nablus, in the northern West Bank, Umm Hossam and her family live in dire conditions in light of the grinding poverty and high unemployment rate that plagues the camp, which is one of the largest in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) security apparatuses have been tracking down the camp’s young men, some of whom are now detained under the pretext of being drug dealers or car thieves.
Umm Hossam said that her husband, a lieutenant colonel with the PA’s General Intelligence Service, took their three sons to the intelligence services a month ago, after being blackmailed and threatened by his employer that he would lose his job if he refrained from doing so.
Umm Hossam’s sons were wanted by the PA for possessing weapons that were not handed over to the Palestinian security agency during its last security sweep in the Balata camp in early February. “They are not the outlaws or drug dealers that the security apparatus is claiming they are,” she said.
