Israeli army tear gasses refugee camp, ruining youth center’s hydroponic rooftop garden


On January 18th, the Israeli army raided the Aida refugee camp firing dozens of tear gas rounds onto the rooftop of the Lajee Center, a community organization that houses a kindergarten, a hydroponics garden, library, and more.

Majd Khawaja, one of the volunteer’s at the Lajee Center, inspects the damaged done to the center’s rooftop hydroponic garden

At 7:00pm local time on Tuesday January 18th, the Israeli army initiated an attack on Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, Palestine. The attack, lasting 20 minutes according to eyewitnesses, was after dark, in empty streets and unprovoked, launched from a military base that overlooks the camp.

It impacted Lajee Center, a youth and community organization that houses a kindergarten, a hydroponics garden, a library, and more and that is located near the military base. The hydroponics vegetable farm on the roof of the building was damaged, with 1,000 seedlings destroyed. The children’s playground adjoining the newly opened kindergarten was also damaged. Since the weather was cold, windows were closed and people inside the nearby houses were not physically harmed, but dense clouds of tear gas settled around the houses and streets in the lower elevations of the camp.

Tear gas clouds cover the Aida Camp following an Israeli raid on January 18th, 2021. (Video: Lajee Center)

The next morning, staff and volunteers of Lajee Center assessed the damage and collected over 150 spent canisters in and around the building. Canisters can also burn surfaces where they settle. Burn marks scarred the street and the ground in many places.

Asked what could have provoked this attack, staff members of Lajee Center could only conjecture. According to those who saw military vehicles approaching, the canister launchers appeared to be a new model. Perhaps they were testing this new equipment? Perhaps this was a collective punishment for some transgression remote in time and place? Perhaps it was bored soldiers doing this for ‘fun’? Or perhaps it was just another reminder of who is the boss. There is no definitive explanation for motive since the Israeli army feels under no obligation to provide one.

Asked about the hydroponics unit, Shatha Al-Azzah, director of the health and environmental programs at the Lajee Center, says that the rooftop farm, established in 2021, serves about 120 families, 800 people altogether, providing them with fruit and vegetables.

There is no open space in the dense and congested camp established by the United Nations following the ‘Nakba’ (Catastrophe) that drove 750,000 people from their homes at the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. In Aida Camp alone, more than 70 years later, families from 27 destroyed and evacuated villages remain in the camp as refugees.

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