It happened on one of Jerusalem's most difficult days during a wave of terrorism in the middle of the previous decade.
A senior Israeli security official asked to discreetly inquire with one of his colleagues in the Palestinian Authority if Abu Mazen and his men would be willing to accept the Shoafat refugee camp in northern Jerusalem as a unilateral gesture from Israel.
The sharp and immediate answer of the Palestinian official surprised the Israeli side: "No! You created this 'monster'. This is 'Jerusalem's Gaza', your problem."
This short episode, which has not been published until now, teaches a lot about the story of the only refugee camp that Israel included in its sovereign territory, and also within the boundaries of Jerusalem, Israel's capital.
The Shoafat refugee camp was actually born on the ruins of the Jewish quarter that fell to the Jordanians in 1978. While the residents of the quarter evacuate to West Jerusalem and the handful of Jewish fighters go to Jordanian captivity, thousands of Palestinian refugees from West Jerusalem made their home among the synagogues and the destroyed Jewish housing. This refugee settlement in the abandoned quarter was Known as Al-Mu'askar camp, until two years before the Six-Day War, the Jordanians had had enough. They took the thousands of refugees out of the Old City, and in coordination with UNRA, housed them north of Jerusalem.
This is how a new refugee camp was born, in Shuafat.
But of course this was only the beginning.
The entire continuation is registered in our name.
In 1967, Israel united the two parts of Jerusalem, but also greatly expanded its borders.
In the north, not far from Aterot, Neve Ya'akov and the areas on which the giant Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev will later be built, Shuafat Camp is also annexed to Jerusalem.
Major General Rehavam Zeevi (Gandhi) outlined the borders of Jerusalem in those days.
He was a maximalist, and Shuafat of that time was small in terms of territory and people, only 3,400 souls.
Nothing at all similar to the monster that later grew into a dense mass of concrete and people, the "Gaza of Jerusalem", where 75 thousand people live.
The Israeli neglect of the place over the years was no different from the neglect in other East Jerusalem neighborhoods.
Israel annexed territories and missed the people who live in them.
However, in Shuafat, as in other nearby neighborhoods, everything was intensified many times over when Israel - against the background of the severe attacks in the second intifada - erected the security fence.
The fence was built south of the area of Kfar Akeb and the Shoafat refugee camp and de facto removed this area from the boundaries of Jerusalem.
In practice, a new Palestinian territory, ex-territory, was created, separated from the capital, although Israeli sovereignty there was not abolished.
It was also forbidden to approach the Palestinian Authority.
"From a distance, on the horizon, you see a sort of small Manhattan", the writer Nir Baram once described this refugee camp, "masses of crowded buildings at different heights... only when you get closer do you notice the gray wall" behind it: chaos.
The establishment of the security fence further deepened the neglect, criminality, poverty and lack of governance that prevailed in the place from the beginning.
Shuafat has been defined for many years by officials as a no-man's land.
The manifestations of distress in these areas are numerous: drugs, poverty, crime, terrorism, and the level of urban infrastructure and urban services is extremely low.
In 55 years, the camp's population grew by more than 2,000%.
They are not of one piece: 15,000 of them are the descendants of the original refugees, who are cared for by UNRA. About 20,000 more are immigrants from the Yosh areas who set up their homes in the camp, and another 40,000 are Jerusalemites from the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem within the fence, mainly from the crowded old city.
They settled in the lowest place in Jerusalem, because it is also the lowest place in the city in terms of housing prices: about NIS 300,000 for a 120-square-meter apartment. Thousands of families in the camp are mixed, where one of the spouses holds an Israeli residency card and the other is a resident of Israel. That.
Their children enjoy all the rights that the resident card yields, especially the National Insurance grants.
Shooting to Zeev Peak
Over the years, the camp became not only a hotbed of crime and drugs, but also a hotbed of terrorism, from which many attacks and terrorists emerged.
The last of them, as we know, was the terrorist Udai Tamimi, a resident of the camp who killed Sergeant Noa Lazar, and after 11 days of fruitless pursuit of him, carried out another attack at the entrance to Mount Adumim, where he was killed.
Among the terrorists who left Shuafat are Ibrahim al-Aqari, who ran over to death in the neighborhood of Shimon Tzadik the police officer Jadean Asad and Shalom Aharon Abdani (November 2014), and other stabbers, shooters and robbers in recent years, mainly in the areas of the light rail, Shaar of Nablus and Shaar of Har Home About half of the victims in the terrorist waves of 2014-2017 came from Shoafat and the neighborhoods beyond the fence.
Israel is the formal sovereign in Shuafat, but Hamas and Tanzim, the founders of Fatah, are also present there alongside it. Security officials estimate that thousands of weapons of various types (Kalashnikovs, Carlo, M16 and pistols; stolen weapons and self-made weapons) are being removed from the camp. But for years , in a conscious decision, the security establishment decided not to open this Pandora's box, for fear of a widespread uprising that would spread to other neighborhoods in Jerusalem. "One day we may regret that we avoided this, there and in other places," a senior police officer tells "Israel this week", "but this The kind of cases where the calculation is done in the short term and not in the long term." As part of this inclusion, only a few of the cases in which residents of the nearby Zeev summit found bullet casings in the shutters of their houses and on their balconies have been published. In most cases, it was unintentional shooting. In the minority of cases, intentional shooting. Some of the cases have been solved Others - no.
It is worth emphasizing: when talking about the Shuafat refugee camp, we are actually also referring to three sub-neighborhoods that are adjacent to it, all of them beyond the fence: Ras Khamis, Ras Shahada and Dahiyyat al-Salam (neighborhood of peace).
Together with the camp, they cover an area of approximately 1,070 dunams.
Shuafat is bordered by Anatha to the east, Hizma and Pisgat Zeev to the north, Shuafat neighborhood to the west and Isaviya to the south.
The security and criminal Achilles' heel in Shuafat lies in the fact that, unlike the separation by means of a wall between it and Jewish neighborhoods such as Pisgat Ze'ev, there is no separation between the camp and neighborhoods and villages that extend from it into the territories of YOSH. This creates a free passage (in both directions) of people, weapons, merchants, criminals , stolen property and terrorism, for whom Shuafat became a city of refuge.
One of the manifestations of chaos is embodied in the fact that there is almost no legal construction in the camp, perhaps only a few houses.
The illegal construction is the standard.
More often than not, these are high-rise buildings, with many safety deficiencies, many of which have already been defined by Jerusalem Municipality audit reports as dangerous buildings. Despite this, demolition orders have been issued for only a few houses there, which no one really intends to implement. In Shuafat, terrorist houses are being demolished, and rightly so , but not illegal and dangerous buildings.
Two of the residents of the camp with whom I met describe (at their request anonymity) a difficult reality in many civil areas.
One, Mahmoud, is married to a woman from the Yosh. The other, Yasser, is married to a Jerusalemite from one of the neighborhoods inside the fence. They both have many children. One of them also has grandchildren. They are longtime residents of the camp. The "Hagihon" company, they say, has invested quite a bit of money in trying to regulate the water supply to the camp, but only some of the residents were registered as regulated consumers, who pay for the water according to the meter reading. Many, they testify, connect to the pipes and steal water. Many of the residents rely on private tanks that are placed almost everywhere in the camp - on the roofs, on the ground and on the balconies .
The sewage and drainage system in the place is also problematic, to say the least, and serious hazards have been created in the past due to this.
The roads in the camp are narrow.
The roads are not paved, and sidewalks are almost non-existent.
There are no public gardens in the neighborhood.
Most of the educational institutions and kindergartens are in rented private houses, and the children play on the road and between the cars.
The street lighting is also only symbolic, and there are still a few places where garbage is still burned, instead of being removed.
"Our identity is Jerusalem"
"Our identity is Jerusalem," they say and emphasize, "don't try to separate us from the city. Most residents from the camp go to work in West Jerusalem and within Israel, most residents receive National Insurance benefits and benefit from the Israeli health care system."
Yasser: "Our main problem is that you claim that this is Jerusalem, but you don't treat it as Jerusalem. You don't really rule here. There is crime and drugs and gangs and thefts and terrorism, and shootings day and night, and the residents suffer and remain silent. They remain silent, because if they speak they will be killed , as in recent years they killed those who opened their mouths and spoke."
"The problem is," Mahmoud is convinced, "that the residents here are more afraid of Hamas and Tanzim than of the Israeli police or the army. Only when it turns around, will we know that you are here to stay and rule."
Yasser says that a few years ago YSM members entered the house of some of his neighbors. "At least that's what we thought.
This is how they looked: with the black coats and helmets and the gray pants.
They apparently came to look for weapons, but after they left the place, my neighbors discovered that valuables had disappeared from their houses.
We contacted the police, and it turned out that it was criminals in disguise.
This audacity of theirs illustrates your helplessness.
There was a time," they recall, "when ambulances and fire brigades would not enter the camp.
Now that has changed.
We described all this distress - the criminality, the illegal construction and the weapons problem - in the Knesset's Interior Committee.
Almost nothing has changed since then.
It's been like this for years."
Nadra Jaber is the head of the community administration surrounding Jerusalem on behalf of the community for settlements. Her area of responsibility is the neighborhoods beyond the fence, including the Shuafat refugee camp. Jaber is a resident of Abu Gush west of Jerusalem. She is an Israeli citizen. Her office is located at the Shuafat checkpoint. She leaves and enters the camp without fear, without any restrictions. Jaber is the face of the residents in front of the municipality and the government offices, and vice versa. She is also a source of inexhaustible optimism.
She is aware of the difficult reality, but puts her hope in new organizations of local leadership, "which takes its destiny in its own hands", and tells for the first time about advanced planning to build an urban educational building in the camp, which will cover ten dunams: two schools for boys, two for girls (elementary and high school) and community administration.
This is unprecedented here, she reports.
Jaber also describes a significant improvement in areas such as sewage and garbage, which until a few years ago the residents suffered greatly from.
She predicts that the construction of the Anata-Jerusalem road will finally allow public transportation to be introduced into some of the camp's alleys.
In these local organizations, which you work with, there are also members of Hamas and Tanzim, which are ultimately terrorist organizations.
"I know, but I don't check. I don't deal with politics. Only municipal needs. When they are in front of me - they also concentrate only on that. For me, it is necessary that they be inside, partners, that everything is transparent in front of them as well, so that later they don't harm Viterpedo. Also They make this separation. With me, everyone is a partner. The interests of the residents come first."
Why is there no law and order in Shuafat?
"There is no law and order, just as there are not many other things, but there is more than before. Residents often come to the police and beg: collect the weapons. Act against the criminal takeover of territories, against illegal construction. Sometimes they even hand over information about where there are weapons and ammunition, But there are authorities in Israel who avoid or are afraid to act."
Shuafat is Jerusalem?
"From the point of view of the residents - unequivocally yes. They feel they are Jerusalemites, they want to remain Jerusalemites and are horrified by the idea that they will be separated from the city."
prevent a dangerous precedent
In order to start addressing the problems in the neighborhood, significant plans are needed, both civil and security.
Jaber explains what the three main problems are that must be addressed.
"The first - to block the free highway of dealers, criminals and weapons between the areas of Yosh and Shuafat and the surrounding area.
It is unbearable.
The second - to make it easier for the residents at the Shuafat checkpoint.
It is inhumane what is happening there.
The last crown was very damaging.
They closed 70 thousand people inside the houses.
What did they expect boys who were cut off from their schools to do?
And the third problem - educational institutions.
Without physical buildings and fields and community centers and cultural centers we cannot really make content and enrichment and activities accessible on a wide scale. This is a change that must come, and the education building that was built is a first step in this direction."
The security establishment decided not to open Shuafat's Pandora's box, photo: AP
The Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Aryeh King, is also very familiar with the camp.
King is vehemently opposed to any idea that would mean disconnecting Shuafat from Jerusalem, whether through the establishment of a separate local council for the camp, within the sovereignty and territories of Israel, and certainly not through transferring it to the Palestinian Authority.
"This is a dangerous precedent. It will immediately be followed by demands to evacuate more neighborhoods," he warns.
King also estimates that the moment such a plan is brought up, "tens of thousands of camp residents will pour into the Jerusalem area inside the fence, to stay within the Jerusalem area."
You are talking about the no man's land where Israel does not control, where there is emptiness and terrible neglect.
"Everything is true, and everything can also be changed. When there was Corona, and when there were floods, the residents came to us, and there was great cooperation, which was led by Mayor Moshe Leon. It's a shame we didn't take advantage of it. You can turn the tide on its head. Education is the first step. Also A community center is now being built in Kalandia.
It is precedent.
They never did such things there.
In the Shalom neighborhood in Shuafat, HaGihon invested tens of millions to improve the water supply system.
Leon realized that you can't talk to them only during an emergency, that you have to show them that we are interested and care about them also on a regular basis.
This is the beginning of a demonstration of sovereignty.
This is the right direction."
The state does not collect the thousands of weapons that residents keep in their homes there.
In the end it will be turned against us.
"And this is a serious mistake, but there are also objective reasons. The police in Jerusalem have a terrible shortage of manpower. A shortage of 1,000 police officers. Even when this happens - it's not just a matter of two or three years. At every meeting of the municipality's emergency and security committee, I say To the representatives of the police: let's launch a thorough, long operation. It will take years, but at the end of this operation, Jerusalem will be much safer. We will go neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street, house by house, with saboteurs and sniffer dogs, and we will snore, with heavy punishments.
After two such neighborhoods, word will spread, and people who are afraid of the fines and the prison will hand over their weapons on their own."
King, like Nadra Jaber, speaks in praise of local leadership, but warns of Hamas and Tanzim's control of the camp.
"When there is security intelligence information - you enter where you want when you want. When the matter is a criminal offender - the determination is much less, to say the least. It's a shame."
"The budget stops at the fence"
Dr. David Koren, currently the CEO of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Studies, served in the years 2011-2018 as Nir Barkat's advisor on East Jerusalem affairs.
What do we do with Shuafat?
I ask him.
Koren shares: "All the attempts I was involved in to bring the issue to a systemic discussion at the cabinet level - failed. There was indeed a discussion at the MLA, but it stopped there.
In the end, there is a systemic issue of national security here at the heaviest level."
Perhaps they should be transferred to the Palestinian Authority, as suggested at the time by Haim Ramon, as suggested by Anat Barko of the Likud at the time? Maybe establish a separate council for them in the areas of Israeli sovereignty but outside of Jerusalem, as minister Ze'ev Elkin suggested?
"The idea of a separate authority is not applicable. No one will allocate resources to it. I also do not currently see the ability to hold such a thing, what's more, the core of these people's attachment is to the city itself. Shuafat is, to a large extent, a sleeping neighborhood. The center of their life is Jerusalem, both at the level of family ties and recreation and also at the level of trade and employment. The option of unilaterally transferring them to the Palestinian Authority is also not serious, if only for the simple reason that the Palestinian Authority would not want them, but as part of an overall arrangement for the evacuation of all of East Jerusalem and the division of the city, which is of course unacceptable".
What is the status of Hamas and Tanzim there?
"My impression is that they are very powerful. Very involved in the management of affairs."
What did the MLA recommend at the time?
"They discussed Elkin's plan to establish a separate council for them, but in the end they recommended that we go in the direction of expanding governance within the municipal framework.
The Masham - the integrated service center established at Shuafat Crossing, which provides services on behalf of the Jerusalem Municipality, the National Insurance and the police - was a first step, which makes it easier to bring in more municipal services as well as community policing."
But all of these are a drop in the ocean, an exception that does not prove the rule.
"In order to create a transformation, billions are needed. I would suggest that the state focus on human capital, employment components, education, welfare. In the physical dimension - it is very, very difficult to operate there, because of the very widespread illegal construction, also on public lands. All planning options are almost closed to us Every infrastructural problem you can think of is there - in the field of water, sewage, construction, development.
"In the famous Resolution 3790, which allocated a budget for the development of East Jerusalem, the money was only earmarked for the neighborhoods inside the fence. The entire area of Shuafat and Kfar Akab was taken out. In the second phase, at the beginning of 2023, this should change. The areas outside the fence should also be budgeted. Even if and when that happens - These budgets are a drop in the ocean. They haven't bothered with these areas for decades. Take all the problems of East Jerusalem, multiply them by powerful multiples - and you will get the result in the areas of Shuafat and Kfar Aqab beyond the fence."
When you walk a little further in these neighborhoods and move to the territory of the Palestinian Authority, you see a different reality - a place that is much more well-kept and maintained and clean and meticulous. What does this mean about us?
"This means that the level of attention of the decision makers has stopped at the fence. Maybe the last serious attack, the murder of Noa Lazar at the Shoafat checkpoint, will open the ears and eyes up there. Maybe."
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