TODAY: Balata Refugee Camp installation and resistance film

Balata Refugee Camp Cultural Presentation at 6 p.m. at the Berkeley Main Library, Meeting Room, 3rd fl.

The Balata Refugee Camp installation is composed of pictures, sound, childrens art, photos, film, stories and video and audio interviews. The content is determined by the people of the camp, and is intended to both represent life here and bring a message to people in the 'West'.

Balata Refugee Camp is one of the most hardhit communities in the West Bank, Palestine. Refugees from the 1948 expulsion, the over 30,000 residents are crammed into a single suffocating square kilometre. Unemployment is the norm, and most families rely on UNWRA handouts for survival. Daily 'visits' by Israeli military jeeps and tanks that park at the entrances and shoot into the camp are taken for granted. It is rare to meet somebody who hasn't tasted tear gas, every second boy seems to have been shot at some stage, and there isn't a house the soldiers haven't entered at some point.
Despite being the largest refugee camp in the West Bank, Balata receives very limited outside support. Visitors are rare and links to abroad are practically non-existent.