Balata
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- For the natural latex see Balatá
Balata (; 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. Residents of the camp 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 UNRWA funds a school in the Balata camp, which educates around 4,000 pupils.
The Israeli army considers Balata camp to be the 'center of terror activity' in the West Bank; Palestinians, on the other hand, consider it to be the center of resistance to Israeli occupation there. Balata 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, Balata camp was the first community in the West Bank to engage in violence.
Balata is one of the most densely populated locations on Earth. Less than 2 square kilometers in size, 30,000 people live in its concrete block houses. The layout of the camp is a product of its creation. In 1950, the UN gave the refugees from the Jaffa area temporary housing. These people initially refused the UN's offers, stating their eagerness to return to their homes. They desired no sense of permanence. After two years, these refugees accepted the UN's offer and settled at Balata.
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. Balata 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 so narrow that large people cannot traverse them.
During the course of the al-Aqsa Intifada, the IDF has 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.[1]
