One of the largest Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, it was established adjacent to the town of Jabalia after thousands of Palestinians displaced there from villages and cities in southern Palestine following the Nakba in 1948. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) supervises the various social services provided to the residents of the camp, which suffers from From overcrowding.
the site
Jabalia camp is located in the northeast of the Gaza Strip, adjacent to the city of the same name, and at a distance of 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 Al-Nazla, and to the east by citrus orchards.
The camp rises about 30 feet above sea level, and is about a kilometer away from the city of Jabalia. It is one of the closest camps to the Erez Crossing, the only outlet for Gaza residents to Israel.
reason of calling
The camp was named after the city of Jabalia, adjacent to which it is located. According to some sources, the name is derived from the mountain, 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 consider it a distortion of the Syriac word “jabaliya,” which is taken from the root “jabala,” meaning pottery and clay.
The origins of the camp
The first Palestinian refugees began to settle in the camp after the Nakba of 1948, and the British Quaker Society supervised it and distributed tents to the refugees until the establishment of UNRWA, based on United Nations General Assembly Resolution No. 302 issued on December 6, 1949.
In 1950, the Gaza Strip witnessed a harsh and stormy winter that led to the uprooting of all tents and the displacement of displaced families. UNRWA – which began its work in the same year – replaced the tents with small one-story houses built of cement and zinc panels. The housing units were crowded and close together, separated only by alleys. Narrow roads turn into muddy roads in the winter.
According to the refugees’ accounts, these rooms did not contain bathrooms, but rather were in the streets, as a section of them was allocated for women and a section for men, and they were not enough for the residents, which prompted them to make repairs to these rooms, adding rooms, toilets, and kitchens, and building new floors in a random manner.
Population
After the Nakba, 35,000 refugees settled in the camp, most of whom had been displaced from villages and cities located in southern Palestine, such as Lod, Ramla, Jaffa, Beersheba, and Ashdod, distributed among 5,587 families.
The population increased in 1995 to about 80,137 people, but in 2023, the official UNRWA website reveals that the camp’s population reached 116,011 people, distributed over an area not exceeding 1.4 square kilometers.
Residents have been subjected to forced transfer over the years. In 1970, Israel transferred about 975 families of the camp’s residents to the Beit Lahia and Nazla project adjacent to the camp’s borders. In 1971, it demolished and removed more than 3,600 rooms inhabited by 1,173 families, under the pretext of expanding the camp’s alleys and roads to… Occupation soldiers’ military vehicles are able to enter the camp and track down resistance members.
The spark of the uprising
The first Palestinian Intifada, also known as the Stone Intifada, was sparked by Jabalia Camp on December 8, 1987, when an Israeli truck driver ran over a group of Palestinian workers at the Erez checkpoint, killing 4 workers and wounding 7 others. The funeral of the victims turned into large demonstrations that quickly spread throughout the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
This uprising continued until the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993.
Infrastructure and social services
UNRWA supervises the various relief services in the camp, as it manages 32 facilities affiliated with it, and according to its data, there are 16 schools, 6 of which operate in a single shift system and 10 that operate in a double shift system (morning and evening), in addition to 3 health centers, a food distribution center, a public library, and 7 wells. And an environmental maintenance and health office.
The camp’s residents live in poor and harsh social conditions due to overcrowding and limited space. Unemployment rates are high, as most of the residents depend on food and cash assistance provided by UNRWA to cover their daily needs. They also suffer from frequent electricity outages and polluted water supplies, as 90% of the water is… Not fit for human consumption.
Assassinations in the camp
Jabalia camp is one of the main strongholds of the Palestinian resistance, which makes it targeted by Israel in all its military operations with the aim of subjugating its residents and breaking the resistance.
The camp was an open field for bombings, assassinations and massacres for decades. Among the most prominent assassinations carried out by Israel there were:
- February 28, 2004 A missile was fired at a car carrying Mahmoud Joudah, a prominent leader of the Islamic Jihad movement, along with two other members of the movement, leading to their martyrdom and the wounding of 11 bystanders.
- October 27, 2005 A drone fired a missile at a car carrying Shadi Suhail Muhanna and Muhammad Ahmed Qandil, members of the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Jihad movement, leading to their martyrdom, as well as the martyrdom of two other passengers, and 3 children who were on the same street.
- November 1, 2005 An Israeli helicopter fired missiles at a car carrying Hassan al-Madhoun, a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and Fawzi Abu al-Qara’, a leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), leading to their martyrdom and the wounding of 10 bystanders.
- December 8, 2005 Israeli forces fired a missile at a house in the camp where Iyad Qadas and Iyad Najjar, two members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, were located, killing them and wounding 5 bystanders.
- February 6, 2006 Israeli forces fired an artillery shell at a car carrying Hassan Asfour and Rami Hanoun, two members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, but it missed the target and then returned to fire a missile from a helicopter that hit the car and led to the death of its two passengers.
- July 5, 2006 Two missiles were fired at a car carrying Imad Asalia and Majdi Hammad, along with two other members of the Popular Resistance Committees, which led to the death of Asalia and Hammad and the wounding of their two companions and two bystanders.
- January 1, 2009 Israeli F-16 aircraft targeted the home of Hamas leader Nizar Rayan, and the operation resulted in the martyrdom of him and 15 members of his family.
Massacres in Jabalia camp
For decades, the camp was subjected to massacres in which hundreds of civilians were killed, during which residential buildings and civil and service institutions were destroyed, which further aggravated the conditions of life in the camp.
Israel carried out a military operation called “Days of Regret” in 2004 under the pretext of securing a buffer zone to protect Israeli settlements from the missiles of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement. During this operation, it bombed the camp for 17 days, which led to the martyrdom of more than 100 Palestinians and the displacement of more than 600 and the destruction of hundreds of residential buildings and civil, health and service institutions.
In 2005, Israel targeted a Hamas military parade in the camp with 4 missiles, killing 19 people, including two children, and wounding about 80 others.
In July 2014, the Israeli occupation forces committed a massacre in Jabalia camp after bombing an UNRWA school in which about 3,000 Palestinians were sheltering, leading to the death of 20 people and the injury of more than 50.
The then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, condemned the massacre and described the bombing of the school as unjustified, while Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, described the attack as the most tragic failure the international community has witnessed in the field of providing protection.
With the launch of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, Jabalia camp was subjected to systematic targeting by the Israeli occupation, as many massacres were committed there.
The Israeli Air Force committed the Trans massacre on October 9, 2023, bombing the main popular market in the camp with heavy bombs, which led to the death of about 50 civilians and the destruction of a large number of homes and citizens’ property.
The camp witnessed another massacre on October 31, 2023, after the Israeli Air Force completely destroyed a residential square near the Indonesian hospital, and the bombing resulted in more than 400 civilians being martyred and wounded.
The Al-Qassam Brigades reported that 7 of its Israeli detainees were killed in this bombing, including 3 who held foreign passports.
A visual analysis conducted by the British newspaper The Guardian identified at least 5 craters in the neighborhood resulting from the bombing, and suggested that bombs weighing about 2,000 pounds, or about 900 kilograms, were likely used.
On November 18, 2023, Al-Fakhoura School, where thousands of displaced people were sheltering, was subjected to violent Israeli bombing, which led to the death of 200 Palestinians. A number of international bodies and countries condemned this massacre and called for an investigation to be opened.
This is not the first time that Al-Fakhoura School – the largest school in Jabalia Camp – has been bombed, as the occupation bombed it in 2009, which led to the death of more than 40 civilians, and it was also bombed in 2014, in which more than 10 civilians were martyred.
On December 2, 2023, more than 100 martyrs were martyred in a new massacre committed by the Israeli occupation forces in the camp, as its planes bombed a residential building belonging to the Al Obaid family with a missile, and the building was housing a number of families and displaced persons from the camp.