Refugee camps

After visiting the internship in Bethlehem, we arranged a tour of the refugee camps in the city.  A couple of guys who live in the camp took us around and showed us the housing areas and explained a bit about it.  Really, it looks like any other part of the city as I'm sure you know.  One of the guys took us to his apartment in the city and we met his parents, got lots of tea and we all sat down and had a long discussion.  The other guy that was with us said that his old apartment had been destroyed by the Israeli military a few years ago and he'd been living with family ever since spread out across the camp.  They also mentioned that nearly 20% of the people there had been in prison at one time or another.  Both of the guys giving us the tour had.  One for 18 months and the other for 6.  When asked why, his mother said it was because they love Palestine.  Turns out they were throwing rocks at soldiers.  I don't get the idea of throwing them in jail, that's just going to make things worse in my opinion.  On returning home, the boys were heroes, too, which doesn't help either.  They showed me a youtube video of the night that he returned and it was a huge party in the streets.  That actually brings up another point.  It is obvious that Bethlehem is not the poorest region of the West Bank because according to them, they have all been to college, his sister is studying in England, and they had cable and internet in the house.  It was obvious that they weren't as well off as the people in Israel, but they were certainly getting by.

I tried asking them about the Arab Spring and they all said that they supported it, but that it would never happen in Palestine.  I didn't quite get that.  It was obvious that they were more supportive of a violent resolution, but when I asked them about how they thought a peaceful protest would work in the West Bank, they just said that the IDF would kill them all.  I have to say that I disagree.  I'm sure there would be lots of deaths, and I thought it would be inappropriate to say that they should do it anyway and risk being shot, but it couldn't last.  There is absolutely no way that Israel would get away with a Syria style suppression for long and I would think that there are too many areas where Palestinians could disrupt Israeli life to get a decent amount of concessions out of them.  I had to wonder what would happen if thousands of Arabs sat on the Israeli highways in the West Bank, blocking traffic, but not throwing rocks or anything.  I'm sure that teargas and rubber bullets would be used, but things like highways are too long to adequately patrol.  If they could disrupt the flow of commerce to the settlements, they would make a huge impact internationally.  I also don't think that Israelis could get away with too much violent non-leathal suppression before they had to give in.  I wasn't about to suggest all of this to him.  I can't imagine being responsible for the idea that started the third intifiada.  That would look good on a US govt application.