Bethlehem, West Bank - Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem, which Pope Benedict XVI visits Wednesday, is one of the smaller camps with around 4000 refugees, but its history tells the story of thousands of Palestinians who left their homes in 1948 to become refugees in their own country. The camp was established in 1950 on a 66,000 square metre plot between two-predominantly Palestinian Christian cities, Bethlehem and neighbouring Beit Jala. It is one of 19 refugee camps in the West Bank and one of a total of 58 camps throughout the Middle East run by the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Aida houses refugees from around 35 Palestinian towns and villages who left their homes following the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. Even though most of them are only minutes away from their original homes, they have not been able to return for 61 years so far, and it does not seem they will be able to any time soon.
Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to visit the camp Wednesday afternoon during a day-long visit to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, where he is going to hold an outdoor mass to thousands of worshippers at Manger Square.
But his visit to Aida, believe Palestinian officials, has a political rather than a spiritual message.
"His visit has a political and symbolic meaning," Issa Qaraqi, a Palestinian lawmaker from Aida refugee camp and head of the local committee preparing for the papal visit, told the German Press Agency dpa.
"The Pope will visit a camp that symbolizes the Palestinian suffering and tragedy, particularly since it takes place as Palestinians mark the 61st anniversary for the nakba (Arabic for catastrophe and the name Palestinians give for the start of their displacement on May 15, 1948)," he said.
"It is as if the pope acknowledges the right of refugees to return to their homes which they were forced to leave in 1948," said Qaraqi.
"This visit to the camp matches the pope's visit to the Holocaust memorial in Israel because he will also be visiting a Palestinian holocaust," he said.
When the Pope had planned to visit the Holy Land, he asked to visit a Palestinian refugee camp to match his planned visit to the Israeli Holocaust memorial in West Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), which runs life in Bethlehem and surrounding towns, villages and refugee camps, decided to bring him to Aida,rather than Dehieshe, one of the largest camps in the West Bank, which Pope John Paul II visited during his 2000 pilgrimage to the holy land.
Aida's location was the main reason behind choosing this camp. It is very close to an Israeli religious enclave in Bethlehem called Rachel Tomb. Because of the presence of this enclave, the Israeli authorities surrounded the camp with an 8-metre high concrete wall with military towers and outposts to separate it from the fortified Israeli point.
The Palestinians wanted to highlight this setting during the Pope's visit to the camp. They decided to receive the Pope and his entourage at a location right next to the separation wall and started to build a platform for this occasion.
However, Israel strongly protested this step and even sent its army to the platform, arresting workers and ordering them to stop work in that area.
Israel says the location of the platform was in an area that is still under full Israeli military control and therefore Palestinians are not allowed to be in that area without army permission.
Israel was also able to convince the Vatican that there was a security risk in the presence of the Pope in that area leading the Vatican to tell the PA to find a more secure location. The location was then moved to an UNRWA-run school in the camp.
"We agreed to change the location because we did not want to lose this opportunity of the Pope visiting the camp," said Qaraqi.
"The school is anyhow only metres away from the original location and the Pope and the rest of the world will be able to easily see the wall and see its impact on Palestinian life," he said.
"When the Pope enters Bethlehem, he is going to see the wall and pass through it and he will see how it restricts life of Palestinians. We hope that when the Pope sees all of this he will use that to pressure Israel to change this situation," he said.
