The Shuafat Refugee Camp is in the news today because it's where the terrorist who
drove into a crowd of Israelis in Jerusalem on Wednesday lived. We have had some comments from readers about the misery and deprivation of life in those camps, so we thought a few photos might be helpful in managing people's expectations and creating context.
All of the snaps below are of the
Shuafat Refugee Camp and
not of the more congenial northern Jerusalem neighbourhood called
Shuafat.
Paradise? No, not at all. But hardly a shanty town either, and
very little like what people imagine when the term 'refugee camp' is deployed to describe the place.
This refugee camp is apparently undergoing massive building and expansion into high rise apartments, and that is why there is little green vegetation planted in the photos. But it looks like it will be quite stunning when the building is finished. I have seen other so-called refugee camps and they are not cities of tent dwellers, like the real refugee camps in nearby Syria or in Turkey or Iraq.
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