Media Narratives and Children’s Rights

Abstract

The aida refugee camp in bethlehem, established in 1950 by UNRWA, is one of the several such camps that dot the Palestinian landscape. The Aida camp, an outcome of the creation of Israel in 1948, are composed of hundreds of shanty homes where around 5,000 third-generation Palestinian refugees live.¹ Lajee was established as a community-based grassroots cultural center offering the refugees avenues for exploring Palestinian traditions. Over the years, Lajee has developed a range of political and cultural initiatives centering on freedom, justice, and the right of return of all Palestinians. It has three main initiatives: dabke (a traditional Palestinian folk dance), human rights workshops, and the new generation project, Al-Nashia. Both dabke and Al-Nashia are designed to recuperate Palestinian cultural memory in terms of oral history and performative practices. Through dabke, Lajee seeks to commemorate Palestinian national identity by reinterpreting the cultural traditions. In the later sections of this chapter, we discuss the complex ways in which youth relate to Palestinian national identity. Al-Nashia is an extensive workshop where young people are trained in cultural remembrance of al-Nakba (Catastrophe, refers to the 1948 displacement of Palestinians from their homeland) and in building cultural memory.