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Abstract
This article examines the urban development of camps under humanitarian mandates in the context of the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) launched its Infrastructure and Camp Improvement Programme (ICIP) in 2007, with several pilot projects carried out to test this new approach. Using Gaza’s Deir El-Balah refugee camp as a case study, this article explores the contradictions inherent to development under humanitarianism and what Ilana Feldman has called “punctuations” in a chronic context of siege and infrastructure violence. That context, the article argues, perpetually sets the refugee communities back, eroding whatever capacities they were able to build up through their own collective efforts and through the aid of which they have been recipients for decades. Compounded by UNRWA’s perpetual funding shortage, the limits of development under the humanitarian umbrella within the context of a technocratic apolitical mandate become even more apparent.
Endnotes
Notes
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2 Philipp Misselwitz and Sari Hanafi, “Testing a New Paradigm: UNRWA’s Camp Improvement Programme,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 28, no. 2-3 (2009): 360–88, https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdp039.
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4 Karim Makdisi and Vijay Prashad, “Introduction” in Land of Blue Helmets: The United Nations and the Arab World, ed. Karim Makdisi and Vijay Prashad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016), 1-18.
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6 Sari Hanafi, Governing Palestinian Refugee Camps in the Arab East: Governmentalities in Search of Legitimacy (American University of Beirut: Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, October 2010), http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/Public%20Sociology,%20Live/Hanafi/Hanafi.Governing%20Refugee%20Camps.pdf.
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8 Hanafi, “Palestinian Refugee Camps in the Palestinian Territory,” 510.
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10 Sayigh, “Dis/Solving,” 22.
11 Department of Refugee Affairs, Refugee Camp Improvement Project (PALCIP): Project Completion Report, State of Palestine, November 2019, https://openjicareport.jica.go.jp/pdf/12326476.pdf.
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13 Misselwitz and Hanafi, “Testing a New Paradigm.”
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23 Al Husseini, “UNRWA and the Refugees.”
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31 The reference to Gaza as a frontier follows the conceptualization of Haim Yacobi and Michelle Pace in “Life in the Time of Coronavirus. #3 Gaza: From Ghetto to Frontier,” Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, May 5, 2020, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/publications/2020/may/ias-talk-pieces-life-time-coronavirus-3-gaza-ghetto-frontier.
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59 Suha Shamiya and Liv Framgard, Deir El Balah Camp Improvement Plan: Improving a Refugee Camp for and with its Residents, Norwegian Refugee Council, October 11, 2017, https://issuu.com/nrcnorcapcampshelterurban/docs/gaza_urban_camp_improvment_plan.
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61 Niveen Ayyoub, “The Living Conditions of Palestinian Refugees in Deir El-Balah Camp (1949–2013)” (master’s thesis [in Arabic], Islamic University of Gaza, 2016).
62 Shamiya and Framgard, “Deir El Balah Camp Improvement Plan,” 98.
63 Telephone interview with the Deir El-Balah municipal engineer involved in the camp improvement project, December 23, 2020.
64 UNRWA, “Community Participation at Core of UNRWA’s New Refugee Camp Improvement Pilot in Gaza,” news release, April 15, 2015, https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/community-participation-core-unrwa%E2%80%99s-new-refugee-camp-improvement-pilot-gaza.
65 Shamiya and Framgard, “Deir El Balah Camp Improvement Plan.”
66 UNRWA, Strategic Response to Gaza Summer 2014 Hostilities.
67 UNRWA, “Islamic Development Bank and UNRWA Sign US$40 Million Re-programming Agreement to Provide Shelter Solutions for Palestinian Refugees in the Gaza Strip,” press release, March 23, 2017, https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/islamic-development-bank-and-unrwa-sign-us40-million-re-programming.
68 Telephone interview with UNRWA officer, Gaza, October 13, 2019.
69 “Deir El-Balah Municipality Reveals a New Project for Camp Development” (in Arabic), Palestinian Refugee Portal, October 5, 2020, https://refugeesps.net/p/15451.
70 Shamiya and Framgard, “Deir El Balah Camp Improvement Plan.”
71 Telephone interview with a refugee whose home was rebuilt in Phase I, Deir El-Balah Camp, January 12, 2022.
72 Telephone interview with a member of the popular committee, Deir El-Balah Camp, January 12, 2022.
73 Telephone interview with a refugee whose home was rebuilt in Phase I, Deir El-Balah Camp, December 19, 2021.
74 Telephone interview with a refugee whose home was rebuilt in Phase I, Deir El-Balah Camp, December 19, 2021.
75 Telephone interview with a refugee who is moving to al-Qastal, Deir El-Balah Camp, December 17, 2021.
76 Telephone interview with a member of the popular committee, Deir El-Balah Camp, December 28, 2020.
77 Telephone interview with a refugee who is a member of the camp development committee and is moving to al-Qastal, Deir El-Balah Camp, December 18, 2021.
78 Telephone interview with a refugee who is moving to al-Qastal, Deir El-Balah Camp, January 3, 2022.
79 Telephone interview with a member of the popular committee on the camp development committee, Deir El-Balah Camp, January 5, 2022.
80 Telephone interview with UNRWA officer, Deir-El Balah Camp, November 30, 2021.
81 Telephone interview with a refugee who is moving to al-Qastal, Deir El-Balah Camp, December 17, 2021.
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83 Telephone interview with a refugee moving to al-Qastal, Deir El-Balah Camp, January 3, 2022.
84 Salamanca, “Unplug and Play,” 25.
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Noor Tayeh
Noor Tayeh is a lecturer in the department of architecture at Al Yamamah University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Her research focuses on sustainable urban development and spatial justice.