Matthew Danton
Contributor
The streets are decrepit in Aida, a Palestinian refugee camp located just two kilometres north of Bethlehem. There are crumbling walls, piles of rubble, and garbage surrounding them all. The men and women who live in these poor conditions are victims of prejudice. This is where Tyler Koverko, a York law student, finds himself with a pit in his stomach.
Koverko, a second-year criminal law student at Osgoode, had a lot of interest in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but he had no genuine understanding of the situation before visiting Bethlehem.
However, last summer, he was awarded $5,000 to plan a trip to Jerusalem where he saw firsthand what the long-standing conflict looks like.
Koverko left for Jerusalem having no partiality for either side. He considered himself an interested third party. With a general understanding, he wanted to better comprehend the conflict and also experience what everyday life was like. Being stationed primarily in Israel, he decided to go out and see what waited for him. That was when he saw Aida.
Aida was established in 1950, and holds over 4,000 refugees. It is just one of 19 refugee camps in the West Bank. There are 62 Palestinian refugee camps across Jordan, Syria, Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Lebanon. These camps house more than four million refugees that were displaced as a result of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.
These people were either forced out of their homes or chose to leave the country.
Koverko was able to see much more than what is reported in the North American media. Even though he began this trip with an open mind towards both sides, biases were unavoidable. However, seeing firsthand a decrepit Palestinian refugee camp and victims of suicide bombings, Koverko felt these biases “beaten out of him,” leaving behind the difficulty to find a “human side” of the issue.
These people were not characters in a movie; they have to continue to live this way everyday. Koverko was surprised to discover that not just the camp’s leaders, but also the children spoke fluent English. Not only did they speak English, most of them were fairly sophisticated and bright—welcoming him wholeheartedly. He saw “human beings with souls behind all the political madness.” It became clear how irresponsible it is to generalize an entire group of people that are caught up in politics that expand far beyond their power.
A major surprise for him was the amicability of Jerusalem.
This trip was very important for Koverko, but he does not want you to simply take his word for it.
“This experience was awesome, unforgettable, a slap in the face and it opened up a major world conflict to me,” he says. These same opportunities are available to all students who wish to take advantage of them. “I learned immediately that you can’t understand why people believe so strongly in the cause, until you know the history.”
Jerusalem was “a life changing experience,” for Koverko.
“Whatever I thought was immediately transformed through personal experience,” he says.
Koverko says he left Canada with little bias towards either the Israelis or Palestinians and came back with even less. It was no longer “this group or this group,” but simply people caught up in defending their rights and beliefs that they hold so sacred.
