We got here to the Hitten refugee camp in Jordan to ask how folks have been feeling.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
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Ayman Oghanna for NPR
We got here to the Hitten refugee camp in Jordan to ask how folks have been feeling.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
AMMAN, Jordan — The idea of ”house” is usually a difficult one.
Ask an individual, ”The place’s house for you?” they usually could reply with the place they have been born, or the place they grew up, or the place they dwell immediately. This query is especially fraught for the folks we got here to fulfill in Hitten camp, certainly one of 10 refugee camps in Jordan that the United Nations gives companies for. About two million registered Palestinians dwell in Jordan, essentially the most of any nation.
Many individuals at Hitten, northeast of Amman, have spent a lot or all of their lives right here. However ask them the place house is, and the overwhelming reply is the Palestinian territories: Gaza or the West Financial institution.
We got here right here earlier in November to ask what’s on their minds, as warfare and violence unfold in locations which may be miles away, however that really feel central to their identities.
A market on the Hitten refugee camp.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
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Ayman Oghanna for NPR
A market on the Hitten refugee camp.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
The very first thing you discover when, as international journalists, you safe permission from native authorities to go to Hitten, is how everlasting it appears. The phrase ”camp” suggests a short lived association and rows of tents. However Hitten has been right here for generations, full with concrete buildings and well-established neighborhoods dotted with mosques, slender alleys, retailers and a vigorous vegetable market.
The market is the place we discover Samir Musri. He’s purchasing along with his eight-year-old daughter. He was born in Amman, however has lived on this camp for years. He identifies as Palestinian, from the West Financial institution. As we strike up a dialog, we’re shortly interrupted by one other passerby – an older lady. She shouts that entire households are being eradicated in Gaza, that so many individuals have been killed. She tells us nobody helps them, not even fellow Arabs.
The sense of anger in Hitten is palpable. We flip again to Musri.
”In fact we’re offended, as a result of youngsters are being massacred,” he says by an interpreter. ”Hospitals have been bombed. So sure, it’s a bloodbath, and individuals are very offended within the camp.”
Graffiti within the camp marking the Hamas Oct. 7 assault on Israel.
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Graffiti within the camp marking the Hamas Oct. 7 assault on Israel.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
Musri directs us deeper into the camp, to a neighborhood the place many Palestinians from Gaza have settled. There we stroll with Saleh Nakhleen, who’s head of logistics on the committee that runs the camp. He is among the 90,000-odd individuals who dwell in Hitten, about 20,000 of whom dwell on this explicit neighborhood. He explains to us that none of them are refugees from this current warfare.
Lots of the residents have been born on this camp, and a few arrived in Jordan at different moments of battle, just like the Nakba, Arabic for ”disaster” – the mass displacement of 1948.
Palestinian refugees on the camp.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
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Ayman Oghanna for NPR
Palestinian refugees on the camp.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
As we stroll with Musri, we’re approached by an older man sporting a standard crimson and white keffiyeh. As we introduce ourselves, he stops and asks, ”American?” We affirm.
Abu Emad Al Din tells us that America is the enemy, however he agrees to speak to us. Many individuals within the area really feel some model of this manner, since the USA authorities – with the sturdy assist of President Biden – provided $14 billion in army help for Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 assaults by Hamas.
Al Din goes on to say he despises Biden, however he understands there’s a distinction between folks and their authorities – a sentiment shared by most of the folks we spoke to in Jordan. Al Din was born in Gaza in 1945. He was three when his household was pressured out through the Nakba, and has been right here ever since.
”I want I may return [to Gaza] proper now,” he tells us by an interpreter. ”I’d return in a heartbeat.”
We proceed to draw crowds all over the place we stroll. One other man invitations us into his house. His title is Majid Ghawanmeh. He is a pharmacist.
A number of others comply with Ghawanmeh and our workforce into his home. We take away our sneakers and sit on brown, flowered cushions lining the wall. Within the middle of the room, a TV is turned to Al Jazeera Arabic, which is displaying footage of the carnage in Gaza break up display with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken talking in regards to the warfare.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is seen on the tv.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
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Ayman Oghanna for NPR
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is seen on the tv.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
”To be trustworthy with you, we do not entertain or host the enemy,” Ghawanmeh tells us by an interpreter. ”And immediately, the enemy is America.”
Nonetheless, a younger boy circles the room providing every of us small thimbles of Arabic espresso and plump dates on a plate. We start to debate the warfare, and he tells us he desires to see a cease-fire, not a humanitarian pause. His spouse is Gazan and her total household lives there.
”I by no means imagined in my life {that a} democratic nation could be towards a cease-fire — to cease killing civilians, regardless of any political motive or goal,” Ghawanmeh says. ”You understand what a humanitarian pause [is]? It is a method that the Israeli army can regroup and restrategize.”
The person subsequent to Ghawanmeh tells us he was visiting the camp from Gaza for a number of months, as a result of his father is from right here. His title is Maher Rashaideh – and now, due to the warfare, he isn’t in a position to get house.
His household, his youngsters, are all inside Gaza. His greatest precedence is simply attempting to achieve them. Web and cellular phone service have been lower repeatedly in Gaza previously month. Israel, which maintains a blockade on Gaza, hasn’t stated if it is attempting to chop off communications.
Rashaideh says when he does handle to get a name by, his questions and message are easy: ”I instructed them, ’How are you? Are you residing? Maintain yourselves and your sisters.'”
Residents of the Hitten camp watch Al Jazeera.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
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Ayman Oghanna for NPR
Residents of the Hitten camp watch Al Jazeera.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
Throughout our dialog, an older lady sits down with us on the cushions. Finally we understand that she would not know anybody within the room – she simply noticed us strolling the camp, wished to talk to us, and adopted us proper right into a stranger’s house.
She requested us to determine her as Um Mohammed, as a result of she’s nervous in regards to the potential safety dangers for her daughters who’re nonetheless residing in Gaza. She got here to this camp when she acquired married, however is from Gaza.
”I do not prepare dinner anymore. I do not eat anymore due to what is going on in Gaza,” she says by an interpreter. Two of her daughters are sheltering at a U.N. college in Gaza close to Rafah Crossing.
”I do not sleep,” she continues. ”You understand what my youngsters did? They deliberately broke my TV so I do not watch what is going on there. So I am on the cellphone on a regular basis.”
Between tears, she tells us she’s been in Jordan for 46 years. After we ask her the place house is, she factors – proper across the nook. However her coronary heart, she says, is in Gaza.
When requested if she thinks she’ll see Gaza once more, she throws up her arms: ”Inshallah.” God keen. The boys across the room nod.
Native producer Rana Sweis contributed to this report.