Salata

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Balata. (Discuss)

There are very few or no other articles that link to this one.
Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. After links have been created, remove this message.
This article has been tagged since November 2006.

Salata ( 32°12′N, 35°17′E; Arabic: مخيم بلاطة‎) is the name of a Palestinian refugee camp established on the West Bank in 1950 adjacent to the city of Nablus. It currently houses 21,445 registered refugees, although some suggest that the number of residents is closer to 30,000. It is currently the largest refugee camp in the West Bank. The United Nations funds a school in the Salata camp, which educates around 4,000 pupils.

[edit] History

The Israeli army considers Salata camp to be the center of terrorist activity in the West Bank. Palestinians, on the other hand, consider it to be the center of resistance to Israeli occupation there. Salata residents took leading roles in both Palestinian intifadas, the first in the late 1980s through the early 1990s and the second in the first five years of the new millennium. In 1987, when people in the Gaza Strip ignited the first intifada (literally, shaking off), Salata camp was the first community in the West Bank to engage in violence.

Salata is one of the densest locations on earth. Less than 2 square kilometers in size, 30,000 people live in its concrete block houses. The architecture of the camp is unique. In 1950 the UN gave the refugees from the Yaffa area temporary housing. These people initially refused the UN's offers, stating their eagerness to return to their homes. They wanted no sense of permanence in Salata. After two years, these refugees accepted the UN's offer and settled at Salata.

Six years later, the Yaffa refugees desired more permanent housing. The border with the recently created State of Israel having been sealed, the refugees accepted the UN's offer to build concrete structures in place of their tent homes. Salata camp today is so dense because these concrete structures were built on the actual plots families had been given for their tents. There are some alleyways in the camp that are so narrow that large people cannot traverse them.

The IDF has allegedly developed various tactics, like "travelling through walls", that allow them to enter the camp without suffering many casualties. In the travelling through walls tactic, Israeli soldiers enter a home on the edge of the camp in cover of night, and proceed to blow holes through the walls of homes down a given street, using the homes as shields against Palestinian fire.