Residents of Jabalia camp mourn one of the martyrs of an Israeli raid on the camp in September 2018 (Anadolu Agency)

One of the largest Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, it was established near the town of Jabalia after thousands of Palestinians fled to it from villages and cities in southern Palestine after the Nakba in 1948. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) oversees various social services provided to the camp's overcrowded residents.

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Jabalia refugee camp is located in the northeast of the Gaza Strip, adjacent to the city of the same name, and one kilometer from the main Gaza-Jaffa road. It is bordered to the north by the village of Beit Lahia, to the south and west by the city of Jabalia and the village of Nazla, and to the east by citrus groves.

The camp rises about 30 feet above sea level, about a kilometer from the city of Jabalia, and is one of the closest camps to the Erez crossing, the only access for Gazans to Israel.

Reason for naming

The camp was named after the city of Jabalia, which is located next to it, a name derived from the mountain according to some sources, while other sources say that it is derived from the word "Azalea", the ancient Roman town on which the village of Nazla was built.

Other accounts considered it a corruption of the Syriac word "Jabaliyah", which is taken from the root of "Jabala" meaning pottery and clay.

Establishment of the camp

The first Palestinian refugees began settling in the camp after the 1948 Nakba, which was supervised by the British Quaker Society and distributed tents to the refugees until the establishment of UNRWA, based on UN General Assembly Resolution 302 of December 6, 1949.

In 1950, the Gaza Strip witnessed a harsh and stormy winter that uprooted all tents and displaced displaced families, so UNRWA, which began its work in the same year, replaced the tents with small one-story houses built of cement and zinc panels.

According to the refugees' accounts, these rooms did not contain toilets, but were in the streets, as part of them were allocated to women and part to men, and they were not enough for the residents, which prompted them to make repairs to these rooms, add rooms, toilets and kitchens, and build new floors in a random manner.

Population

After the Nakba, 35,5587 refugees settled in the camp, most of whom had been displaced from villages and cities in southern Palestine, such as Lod, Ramle, Jaffa, Beersheba and Ashdod, and were distributed among <>,<> families.

The population increased in 1995 to about 80,137 people, and in 2023, the official UNRWA website reveals that the population of the camp reached 116,011 people, distributed over an area not exceeding 1.4 square kilometers.

In 1970, Israel deported about 975 families of camp residents to the Beit Lahiya and Nazla project adjacent to the camp border, and in 1971 it demolished and removed more than 3600,1173 rooms inhabited by <>,<> families, under the pretext of expanding the camp's alleys and roads so that Israeli military vehicles could enter the camp and track down resistance elements.

The spark of the uprising

The first Palestinian intifada, also known as the Stone Intifada, originated in Jabalia camp on December 8, 1987, when an Israeli truck driver ran over a group of Palestinian workers at Erez checkpoint, killing four workers and wounding seven others. The funeral of the victims turned into large demonstrations that quickly spread throughout the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

This intifada continued until the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993.

Infrastructure and social services

UNRWA oversees the various relief services in the camp, managing 32 of its facilities, and according to its data, there are 16 schools, 6 of which operate on a single-shift and 10 double-shift (morning and evening) basis, in addition to 3 health centers, a food distribution center, a public library, 7 wells, and an environmental health and maintenance office.

Most residents rely on UNRWA food and cash assistance to cover their daily needs, frequent power cuts and contaminated water supplies, with 90 per cent of the water unfit for human consumption.

Assassinations in the camp

Jabalia camp is one of the main strongholds of the Palestinian resistance, which makes it a target of Israel in all its military operations with the aim of subjugating its residents and breaking the resistance.

The camp has been an open arena for bombings, assassinations and massacres for decades, and the most prominent assassinations carried out by Israel are:

  • February 28, 2004 A rocket fired at a car carrying Mahmoud Judeh, a senior Islamic Jihad commander, along with two other members of the movement, killing them and wounding 11 bystanders.
  • October 27, 2005, a drone fired a missile at a car carrying Shadi Suhail Muhanna and Muhammad Ahmad Qandil, members of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, killing them and two other passengers and three children on the same street.
  • November 1, 2005, an Israeli helicopter fired missiles at a car carrying Hassan al-Madhoun, a commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and Fawzi Abu al-Qara, a Hamas commander, killing them and wounding 10 bystanders.
  • December 8, 2005, Israeli forces fired a rocket at a house in the camp where Iyad Qaddas and Iyad Najjar, members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, were present, killing them and wounding five bystanders.
  • February 6, 2006, Israeli forces fired an artillery shell at a car carrying Hassan Asfour and Rami Hanoun, members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, but missed the target, and then returned to fire a missile from a helicopter that hit the car and killed its occupants.
  • July 5, 2006 Two rockets were fired at a car carrying Imad Asalia and Majdi Hammad along with two other members of the Popular Resistance Committees, killing Asaliya and Hammad and wounding their two companions and two bystanders.
  • January 1, 2009, Israeli F-16 jets targeted the home of Hamas leader Nizar Rayan, killing him and 15 members of his family.

Massacres in Jabalia camp

For decades, the camp has been subjected to massacres in which hundreds of civilians have been killed, during which residential buildings and civil and service institutions have been destroyed, further exacerbating living conditions in the camp.

Israel carried out a military operation called "Days of Remorse" in 200 under the pretext of securing a buffer zone to protect Israeli settlements from rockets from the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, during which it bombed the camp for 4 days, killing more than 17 Palestinians, displacing more than 100 and destroying hundreds of residential buildings and civil, health and service institutions.

In 2005, Israel targeted a Hamas parade in the camp with four rockets, killing 4 people, including two children, and wounding about 19 others.

In July 2014, Israeli occupying forces committed a massacre in Jabalia camp after bombing an UNRWA school where some 3000,20 Palestinians were sheltered, killing 50 people and injuring more than <>.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the massacre and described the bombing of the school as unprovoked, while UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl described the attack as the international community's biggest tragic failure to provide protection.

With the start of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 2023, <>, Jabalia camp was systematically targeted by the Israeli occupation, where many massacres were committed.

The Israeli Air Force committed the Trans massacre on October 9, 2023, bombing the camp's main popular market with heavy bombs, killing about 50 civilians and destroying a large number of homes and citizens' properties.

The camp witnessed another massacre on October 31, 2023, after the Israeli Air Force completely destroyed a residential block near the Indonesian hospital, resulting in more than 400 civilians killed and wounded.

The Qassam Brigades reported that seven Israeli detainees were killed in the shelling, including three with foreign passports.

A visual analysis by the British newspaper "The Guardian" identified at least 5 craters in the neighborhood caused by the shelling, and suggested the use of bombs weighing about 2000,900 pounds (about <> kilograms).

On November 18, 2023, Al-Fakhoura School, where thousands of displaced people were sheltering, was subjected to heavy Israeli shelling that led to the death of 200 Palestinians, and a number of international bodies and countries condemned this massacre and called for an investigation.

This is not the first time that Al-Fakhoura School, the largest school in Jabalya camp, has been bombed, as it was bombed by the occupation in 2009, which led to the death of more than 40 civilians, and was also bombed in 2014, in which more than 10 civilians were killed.

On December 2, 2023, more than 100 martyrs were martyred in a new massacre committed by the Israeli occupation forces in the camp, where its warplanes bombed a residential building belonging to the Al-Obaid family with a missile, and the building housed a number of families and displaced people from the camp.

Source : Al Jazeera + Websites